


It Echoes When I Breathe

by spockandawe



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Aftercare, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Depression, Developing Relationship, Dreamsharing, Emotional Baggage, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Grief/Mourning, Language, M/M, No Hotakainen Is Neurotypical, Not Cheating, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2020-10-11 00:01:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 71,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20536820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spockandawe/pseuds/spockandawe
Summary: They bring you back to Keuruu.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](https://spockandawe.tumblr.com/tagged/it%20echoes%20when%20i%20breathe/chrono)

They bring you back to Keuruu.

It’s not— It isn’t— They’re not bringing you to Keuruu for any specific reason, but they’re bringing you out of the silent world, and this is where they’ve decided to do it. There are plenty of ships that leave the country from Keuruu. Now that the group has brought you back to Lalli, you expect the rest of them will be parting ways soon enough. Going back to their own families. 

And you aren’t in a position to argue, even if you could scrape together the energy to do it, but… _ Keuruu. _Just thinking about it is bad. Seeing it over the water is worse. You know why you’re going here. You know that coming out of the silent world is going to be a cause for concern, and your party includes two people who aren't immune. And you know that Keuruu is the best facility in the country for going through quarantine and being cleared to travel. 

You might not have understood the debate, but the Dane. Mikkel. He told you what the others had decided and asked if you thought that was a good plan. You hadn’t answered him. It was close enough to agreement.

Besides. You understand. You do. If you aren’t happy with the situation, that’s your own problem. You think that Lalli might see something of what you’re feeling. He watches you… closely. And you don’t blame him for that. You’ve given him enough reason to doubt you. But even in happier times, it could be uncomfortable to have him study you this way, and it’s worse now, when you don’t want to even be seen.

The quarantine won’t be pleasant. Just seeing Keuruu from a distance is bringing back too many memories, and you don’t want to think of how it will be once you’re in quarantine, how it will be once you’re _ there. _Eleven years of history is too many to ignore. And you can’t help remembering the last few nights you spent in Keuruu, unable to sleep, unable to stop your mind from circling and circling through every possible nightmare scenario you could dream up— 

You lean on the railing and stare at the water instead. The sun is shining too brightly for any seal beasts to make an appearance, but you look for them anyways. 

There’s movement at your elbow, and Lalli slips into place beside you, moving almost silently. His friend is much noisier. He’s talking— to Lalli, you assume, because if he expects you to understand a word he says, he’ll be disappointed. But he still steps up to Lalli’s other side, leaning out over the water, his elbows braced on the railing.

And he’s still talking. You’re prepared to ignore him, but Lalli turns to him, touches his arm, and says, “Emil.”

After that, his friend mutters a few last words and sighs heavily. But then he’s quiet. When you glance sideways at him, he’s smiling faintly as he looks out over the water and shifts one arm just enough to bump elbows with Lalli.

When Lalli turns back to you, he just watches you for a long moment. Eventually, he says, “You don’t want to stay at Keuruu.”

“Mm.” You’d rather not be going there in the first place, but that’s close enough.

“We don’t have to.” He’s quiet again for a few seconds, and turns to look out over the water. “We can go anywhere we want.”

He’s emphasizing that _ ‘we’ _ a little more strongly than he usually would. You understand why. And you understand that you upset him. This is what you were trying to avoid by writing him that letter. You… don’t disagree with what he’s saying, but you can’t tell him you agree either. Going to Keuruu is unbearable. Leaving Keuruu will be unbearable. There’s nothing you can do about that. So you don’t reply to him. The two of you watch the waves in silence until Lalli’s friend finally decides he can’t bear the quiet any longer and they begin talking back and forth in a broken mixture of Swedish and Finnish.

You’re familiar with the quarantine facilities on Keuruu. You haven’t stayed in them yourself for more than a decade, but occasionally you were sent just far enough outside the main walls to cast defensive spells over the building. You only did that at times when the quarantine rooms were sterilized and empty, and the people working there stayed out of your way as you walked the halls. It’s different now, with crowds of workers clustered around you and the others, almost faceless in their protective suits, talking over each other, and shepherding you down the halls and into your residence for the next two weeks.

Lalli had told you how his crew had lived in the quarantine ship for the month before they reached Iceland. Finland is less… rigid. With the immunity rates at Keuruu, you’re more of a danger to the livestock than to the staff. You aren’t split into separate too-small quarters with glass walls that make it impossible to ever be truly alone. All of you and the cat are sent to a large shared room with beds clustered against one wall and a table and chairs against another. An interior door leads to what you assume is a toilet and shower. The main door has a window set into it, but all the walls are opaque. 

In some ways, you already resent the lack of privacy. You won’t be able to get away from the others for two weeks. Being in company with even Lalli is strained and uncomfortable, which is an unpleasant new experience. To add the others on top of that— On the other hand, it removes the quarantine experience from what it was before. The memory is old, but feels terrifyingly fresh, and the picture in your mind is still painfully clear. A room filled with glass walls, _ feeling _ the others from the village dying all around you, with Lalli on one side and Tuuri on the other, too sick with fear to sleep, spending every day watching her through the walls for some sign, _ any _ sign that she was sick— 

It’s fine. Keuruu only does the individual quarantines after a disaster like— like that. This isn’t the same. You know it isn’t. Your heart is still pounding in your chest from just the memory. The foreign mage is saying something to you, but you can’t force yourself to make sense of the Icelandic right now. You just make a neutral noise of acknowledgment and hope it satisfies him. You aren’t sure it does. The Dane is looking at you oddly, but you just pointedly ignore him until he finally shrugs and turns away.

You take one of the top bunks. Lalli immediately takes the one beneath you. His friend settles in next to him, but the Icelandic mage settles in next to _ you. _And wants to talk. At least when you roll over on your side and face the wall, he takes the hint and stops trying to hold a conversation. You lie there for a while, pretending to sleep, until actual sleep finally takes you. It’s only midday, but you drift in and out for some time, until you hear the others around and beneath you, dimming the lights and settling into their own beds.

It’s only the beginning of the quarantine, but already the time is passing… slowly. You’d hoped that you could sleep the days away, but you should have known better. The first night isn’t as bad as it could be. It’s restless. You wake, over and over, but there’s nothing to do but force yourself into sleep again each time. You endure the next day. You make your way to the table, somehow, and eat without tasting. You let the quarantine workers lead you through a physical examination and don’t properly hear the things anyone says to you. Lalli watches you, but you don’t know what to say to him. The second night, you’re asleep and dreaming, wandering aimlessly through your woods. Until you stop to look up at the sky and rest a hand on the tree trunk beside you. The bark slides out from under your hand, peeling easily from the tree, and lands on the ground with a soft, wet noise. The damaged spot on the trunk drips fluid, and you can see movement underneath, the red, glistening shift of muscle— 

You wrench yourself awake, gasping, and before you’re even fully aware you’re casting around with all your senses to be sure it was just a dream, _ just _a dream— There’s nothing else. You can feel the two mages beside you, the other three in the room, the cat. The fainter glow of the other mages and workers in the building. No corruption. Not here. Not in quarantine. Not until far outside the fortifications.

You slump with relief. It’s safe. You’ll just check on Tuuri, just to be _ sure,_ and then you can— 

When you remember, it’s like being thrown into ice water. It shouldn’t be a shock, not at this point. Not anymore. But you weren’t ready and you let yourself slip into old, familiar habits, and— You try to focus on breathing, slow and shallow, but your throat closes and your eyes start to burn. Everyone is asleep, so you let yourself take a few deeper, uneven breaths, ignoring how ragged they sound. You press the heels of your hands against your eyes until you feel like you can control yourself again. 

You aren’t going to be able to sleep, though. Not like _ this. _You still feel shaky, and your head is aching from the effort of holding everything back. You sit upright and untangle yourself from the sheets, then climb down to the floor as quietly as you can.

At first, you’re pleased with yourself when Lalli stays stretched out on top of his sheets and doesn’t wake. You keep an eye on him, but he seems safely asleep, and you’re so focused on him that you nearly jump out of your skin when his friend suddenly says, “You are okay?”

You stare at him blankly for a moment. You weren’t ready to answer any questions. You weren’t ready to speak to people. And when you glance back at Lalli, he has one eye open now, watching you.

So you just say, “Bathroom,” and walk to the little side room before either of them can say anything else to you.

Once the door is shut behind you, you lean on the sink and let yourself sag down against it, staring at your hands without really seeing them. After a moment, you force yourself to start the faucet running. It shakes something loose in you, and you bend down to splash cold water over your face. Your hands are unsteady, but it doesn’t matter. You don’t feel any better, but you feel more awake, more able to _ think _ again. 

Even after you shut off the faucet, you stay there for a while. You shut your eyes and concentrate on your breathing. Water drips occasionally off your nose and chin, but you ignore it. 

Your face has nearly dried when you finally decide to go back to your bed. You avoid looking at any of the others, but you’re almost certain that Lalli’s friend isn’t asleep. You just refuse to acknowledge it. And when you’re climbing back into the top bunk you catch a glimpse of Lalli watching you. But that’s so typical of him that it almost feels comforting instead of intrusive.

In the morning, you want nothing more than to stay in bed and pretend the rest of the room doesn’t exist. But that will draw more attention than you want right now. It’s well into the day and everybody else is up and about, and you can hear them all speaking quietly on the far side of the room. That is, everybody is up except the cat, who has established herself on your pillow, positioned perfectly so that if you turn your face towards the wall, you can’t breathe. Odds are higher than you like that Lalli has already noticed you’re awake. You doubt he’ll tell anyone. Still. 

As soon as you sit up, the conversation pauses and you can tell all eyes in the room are on you. You grimace and try to ignore it. People begin speaking again as you climb down to the floor. You suppose you’ll have to look at them eventually, so you grit your teeth and force yourself to do it. They’re all carefully not looking your way, and it’s almost worse than direct scrutiny would be. Except for Lalli. He’s watching you openly, his eyes narrow as he studies you.

Lalli and his friend are seated at the table, which is covered with the remains of a large breakfast. You don’t feel hungry. But you know you should eat.

You cross the room towards Lalli, nodding at him as you draw close. He doesn’t say anything, but kicks a chair out from the table as you approach. He hasn’t stopped examining you. His friend has his eyes fixed on his own empty plate and nudges Lalli pointedly with his knee, but Lalli only jabs one elbow back into his friend’s side and continues looking.

You don’t think you mind. You’ve never had much luck explaining to him why people would think this was rude, and you got used to it a long time ago.

As you take a seat, Lalli reaches for a covered serving dish and slides it your way. You almost refuse it at first, but you catch a whiff of porridge and abruptly realize that you can’t even remember what you ate yesterday. Lalli is ahead of you and has already placed a butter dish and a jar of sugar next to your hand.

Yes, fine. He’s right. You take a bowl and serve yourself. The others all seem to have eaten already, but there’s plenty of food left and the porridge is still hot. When you’re halfway through your bowl. Lalli adds a basket of bread. Then jam. He nudges his friend and has him pass a platter of sliced meats and cheeses your way. By the time you finish your porridge, Lalli still hasn’t said a word to you, but has managed to array all the rest of the food on the table around your seat.

You hear someone approaching you from behind and you tense, but don’t have anywhere to go.

“You slept for a while. Tired?” Icelandic. And the Dane— Mikkel.

“No.”

He comes around to your side and shrugs agreeably. “Either way, we might as well relax while we’re in here.” He holds up a kettle. “Coffee?”

You blink once. He’s waiting for a reply. “No.”

“I’ll just leave this here, in case you change your mind.” He sets it down next to Lalli’s arrangement of food. “We have tea as well, unless Reynir has managed to drink it all.”

From behind you, you hear, “I haven’t drunk it _ all! _But I can bring it back to the table, it’s no trouble.” 

Before you can say it isn’t necessary, the foreign mage is already bending over you, reaching past your shoulder to place another kettle onto the table. He hasn’t stopped talking. “It still isn’t very good as a soup, but it was _ much _ better once I found out you could add sweetener, don’t you think? I poured some by accident, because I assumed, you know, it had to be coffee, but then—” 

The foreign mage is still leaning over you. You can feel his hand on the back of your chair and see him from the corner of your eye. Mikkel is still looking down at you from above, and you can _ feel _ Lalli and his friend both watching you from the other side. You aren’t— You aren’t frozen. You’re not _ happy, _but you aren’t frozen, you just aren’t sure who to tell to stop or how to do it— 

You’re still trying to come to a decision when the Dane bends down a tiny bit further and looks into your face. He straightens and reaches over you, taking the foreign mage by the shoulder and turning him away. He says, “Reynir, if you don’t mind, I have a few questions I’ve been hoping to ask you…” 

It’s a transparent lie, but you don’t care. Now all you have is Lalli watching you and his friend pretending not to watch you. You try to focus on the food. You were hungrier than you realized. Lalli takes a piece of ham from the platter of meat and cheese and nibbles as he studies you. You take some smoked salmon for yourself, alternating slices with bites of bread.

From Lalli’s far side, you hear his friend clear his throat and quietly say, “I thought… dislikes fish?”

Lalli shakes his head. “Likes fish. Dislikes _ fishing.” _

You give in and shoot Lalli one sideways look. He sighs and rolls his eyes, but turns away from you, back towards his friend. Whatever he says next is in Swedish. You know the odds are good that you’re still a topic of conversation, but at least now you can ignore it more easily. 

When you finally set aside the food, you are thirsty. You look at the two kettles. When you smell the first, it’s the coffee, and you push it off to the side. You don’t like how coffee affects you. The other kettle has the tea— which turns out to be peppermint. You pour yourself a mug and stir in a spoonful of sugar.

As you take your first sip, you realize Lalli is looking at you again. He says, “You can ask for a different tea later if you want. They still remember us.”

“Mm.” You don’t know how you feel about that. You aren’t… surprised. You were here for over a decade. But you think you’d prefer if nobody had ever acknowledged it. “Did you ask for this?”

“Yes.” There’s a little pause. “It seemed good for you right now.”

You don’t answer that, and Lalli lets the conversation die. After a minute, you take your tea and leave the table. Lalli isn’t demanding. But the attention is still too much right now. There are waist-high shelves built into the wall, stacked with assortments of books and games and other little things to pass the time. When you glance out across the room, you see a scattered chess set beside the Norwegian captain’s feet and a small pile of books between Lalli’s bed and his friend’s.

You pull a book from a shelf without even looking at the title and pick out a chair tucked into the corner of the room, away from the others. When you sit and try to read, you know you aren’t taking in more than half the words. But you keep turning pages and wait for the hours to go by.

In the afternoon, there’s a knock at the door. You ought to be be expecting it, but it still startles you. You’re still trying to calm your racing heart when Mikkel goes and answers it, opening the door to let in a half dozen workers in protective suits. This part of the routine, you know. Remember. It’s different to be doing it in company, but the questions and procedure haven’t changed in the last eleven years. You and the foreign mage aren’t immune, so you’re examined first. You answer their questions mechanically without needing to think about the answers. No, no unexplained pain or itching, no difficulty breathing, no disorientation, you haven’t noticed any discolorations on your skin. At the end, they have you strip and examine you from all angles themselves, and then they declare themselves satisfied and leave you to pass the time until this all repeats tomorrow. 

You dress and go back to your chair as everyone else goes through the same thing. Lalli doesn’t like this. Nobody likes it, really, and this goes faster with someone who’s known to be immune, but you can see the irritation in Lalli as they turn him, lifting and rotating his arms, combing through his hair to examine his scalp. He doesn’t snap at them, which is better than the last time you went through quarantine together. He even waits until the examination is over to bolt. He keeps one eye on his friend as he pulls on his clothes and continues to do so as he drags an additional chair over to where you’re sitting. He shoves his chair into place right beside yours and sits down on it with his legs curled up on the seat and his arms crossed, still watching the quarantine workers. He leans into you, so that his shoulder digs into your upper arm. 

After the quarantine workers are done with Lalli’s friend, he looks for a moment like he’s planning to join you and you’re already cringing and wondering if you can just tell him to go away. But before you can say a word, from the corner of your eye you see Lalli shake his head very slightly. His friend pulls up in his tracks. He shrugs, but doesn’t look too unhappy as he wanders off to the other side of the room and strikes up a noisy conversation with the Norwegian captain. You can’t help keeping half your attention on the others as the quarantine workers look them over. It doesn’t matter. You know it doesn’t. Lalli will be fine regardless. You still can’t manage to focus on your book.

When all of the examinations are complete, the person directing the other workers heads over to— to you. She says, “Sir, we’re done, we just need to review some particulars with you before we leave you for the day.”

All you can do is stare blankly at her. You heard the words. You— understand. But you also can’t do this right now. You weren’t ready for this, you didn’t have time to brace yourself, you don’t know what you need to say to her, and it’s such a little thing, but right now it’s just too _ much. _

She waits for an answer that doesn’t come. Then after an awkward pause, she turns to Lalli and says, “Sir?”

He doesn’t answer her either. And you can tell by the set of his mouth that he has no plans to help with this right now. You’re the only two in the room who know proper Finnish and you’re a better choice for this job than Lalli, you just can’t manage to force yourself to speak.

“Do you need some assistance?”

It’s Icelandic. Mikkel. The woman smiles, obviously relieved, and switches languages and turns to speak to him instead.

Lalli says, _ “Phh,” _ and turns his head so his face is pressed into your shoulder. You agree with his assessment.

You try to let some of the tension slide from your body, without much luck. At least you manage to ignore the bulk of the conversation between Mikkel and the quarantine workers. You should be listening. Mikkel glances your way once or twice, like he might ask for your opinion if you give him an opening. You ignore that too.

You keep your eyes fixed on your book until they go. You aren’t really seeing the words, no matter how long you look at the pages. Lalli sighs heavily, and you feel it through your sleeve as he breathes out. He pushes upright and looks off across the room at the others, but stays where he is, curled up in his chair with his shoulder pressed against your arm.

It’s easy to stay like that. Lalli seems comfortable enough. You don’t have anywhere else to be. The others are preoccupied with some game on the far side of the room and aren’t paying you any attention. The cat eventually wanders your way and jumps into your lap, settling herself right in the middle of your book. After that you don’t even have to pretend to read. You pet the cat and feel her purring under your hand, lean into Lalli, and let yourself drift.

The only other real disruption of the day is dinner. You go to the table before someone can pull you there, or before people can stare too hard at you. Lalli trails a half step behind you, following so closely you’re almost touching, and as you gingerly take a seat, his friend pushes a plate of fish down the table towards you. You see Lalli make a face at him as you settle yourself, and his friend goes a little pink and shrugs helplessly. When Lalli grabs the basket of fresh rolls and puts it in front of you, his friend makes a face right back at him. You wind up with the two of them seated on either side of you, and decide to let them entertain each other while you just focus on your meal.

After dinner is over, you think you can get away with returning to your bed. The cat is perched on the Norwegian captain’s shoulders, daintily accepting little pieces of meat. And you haven’t had any luck in reading so far. It’s still early, but there’s no natural light in the quarantine room, and you might as well sleep away as much of your time here as you can.

When Mikkel asks if you’re tired, this time you even manage to tell him, “Yes.”

Lalli watches you climb up to your bunk without saying a word. He drifts over towards his friend, and you can see them talking, though it’s too quiet for you to make out anything they say. After a few seconds, Lalli bumps his shoulder up against his friend’s and makes a beeline for the Icelandic mage. 

_ This _ one, he flicks right in the forehead. You sigh to yourself, but you can’t fight this right now. At least when the foreign mage says, _ “Ow, _what is it this time?” he doesn’t sound too terribly upset. Of course, now you also know Lalli has done this to him before. You aren’t going to even think about this right now. You roll over so that you’re facing the wall, shut your eyes, and do your best to fall asleep.

Your forest is quiet. You can always hear the wind and the water, but the dream is open and empty, with space to breathe, and nobody here except for you. You sit on the bank overlooking the water, your back to the rocks and your feet resting on the one stone that sits just far enough above the water to stay dry. Here, you close your eyes and doze, letting yourself relax for the first time all day. You drift in and out, feeling the time pass around you. And then you hear a voice.

“Onni! Hi!”

It’s the foreign mage. When you open your eyes, he’s standing only a few paces away, with his dog sitting at his heels. It’s as unsettling as ever to have him appear so casually in your dream, bypassing all your defenses, apparently without even realizing they exist. 

“It’s me, Reynir.”

You shut your eyes again. “I know.”

He says, “I’m only here for a moment, really, just to make sure Lalli got to you okay. Could you let him in?”

Your eyes fly open again and you stumble to your feet. Your stomach lurches even though you _ know— _ You know the worst of the danger has passed. Lalli is able to protect himself against most things. You focus enough to open a door into your dream for him. It doesn’t make you happy that he’s standing out there without calling to you, even though you know he wasn’t just passively waiting to be noticed, even though you _ know _that drawing attention out on the open water can be dangerous. You just— You’re so exhausted with worrying, but you don’t know how to stop.

Once Lalli is safely inside your forest, he nods once at the foreign mage. At Reynir. Before you have to decide how to handle… all of this, Reynir says, “I’ll be heading out, then. Have fun!”

And then he’s gone.

That’s something, at least. Your heart is still pounding and you lean back against the rock wall and rub one knuckle between your eyes as you try to recenter yourself. Lalli closes the distance between the two of you, but he doesn’t say anything yet, just studies you.

You take a deep breath. “Did you need to talk about something?”

He shrugs. “Not really.”

There’s silence as you wait for him to go on, but he doesn’t say anything more. He just looks off to the side without speaking. So you try, “You wanted to visit?”

“I can go.”

You don’t sigh. “You don’t need to go.” And you don’t want him crossing the open water by himself, even now. But you know that telling him that won’t help. “We can talk. Come, sit down.”

You take your seat again, letting the familiarity center you. You’ve known these woods ever since you can remember, the rocks at your back, and the stone under your feet. And you’ve lost count of how many times you’ve spoken to Lalli here. If you force your thoughts away from the last half year, you can almost imagine it’s like… before. You aren’t in a rush, you’re only waiting for the night to pass, so you don’t feel the need to hurry Lalli along as he edges closer and perches on the rocks beside you.

Once he’s seated, you wait a minute for him to say something, but you aren’t that surprised when he remains silent. You keep looking straight ahead, watching him at the edge of your vision, and say, “How are you?”

He shrugs without speaking. 

“You seem to be getting on well with the others.”

Lalli says,_ “Mrrr,” _and turns in place so that he’s still sitting beside you on the rocks, but now his back is facing you.

You hesitate a little. It can be hard to understand what he wants when he gets like this, and you’re too exhausted to really focus on picking apart the puzzle. “Do you want me to be quiet?”

“No,” he says, his voice sullen. He leans back into you, so that his back rests against your arm.

You still don’t sigh, not when he’ll feel it so easily. You’d just like to. And you’re almost certain you’re too tired to do this conversation justice, but you try to go back over the recent past and try to guess at what might be on Lalli’s mind. Him coming back to Saimaa for you— _ You’re _ not going to touch that one. That might be it, but you just— can’t. But there’s another, easier possibility.

“Your friend,” you begin. “The Swedish one.”

There. That makes Lalli laugh— just once, almost soundlessly. “Emil. Very Swedish.”

“You get along well.”

“I like him. He’s weird sometimes, but he usually listens when I tell him he’s being stupid.”

“Tell me about him.”

That does the trick. You can feel Lalli relaxing. He leans further back into your side as he talks. It’s not the easiest to follow. He has so many little stories to tell you about Emil from their time in the silent world where you’re almost sure everything is out of order and you’re _ positive _ you don’t have all the context to fully understand what he’s saying. But it’s good to hear him talk about someone like this. To _ have _someone to talk about like this. 

It catches your attention when Lalli says, “And then there was after— For a while Emil and I were separated from the others. At the end.”

He keeps going, but you lose track of his words for a moment. Your chest is so tight it aches. It’s not that it’s a surprise to hear about— about Tuuri. But you hadn’t been expecting it and it hurts to be reminded.

And Lalli has noticed that something is wrong. He says, “...Onni?”

Deep breath. “I’m fine. Go on.”

“Hmh.” He sounds doubtful, but after a moment, he continues. “Anyways. We were running together and I took us out over the ice. But Emil’s heavier than me, and he fell through when we were still too close to shore. The giant was coming for us and I… didn’t want to leave him on his own.”

Sometimes you’re in a situation where there’s nothing anybody can do and you have to make difficult decisions. But you aren’t going to tell him that when he already knows it better than you do. “I suppose I can assume neither of you died.”

He hesitates for a moment too long. “I killed the giant. With magic. It threw me out of my body.”

He’s safe. He’s here, next to you, with you, _ touching _ you. Your heart still begins to race. If he’s right about that, he should be dead too. “What happened?”

Lalli sighs and leans back harder into you. “I don’t know. I was lost in the middle of the water. Like in here, but different. I saw a light and swam towards it because I didn’t know what else to do.” He hesitates again. “Onni, have you ever shared a dream with someone who isn’t a mage?”

“No. They don’t dream the way we do.”

“Mm.” He pauses for a few seconds. You’d push him to continue, but your throat is too tight and you’re still fighting to keep your breathing slow and steady. Finally, he says, “It was Emil. It was— I don’t know. His old home. It was like your forest, or my forest, but a house. And he was in the dream, but he was _ part _of the dream too. He broke away from that a bit. When he saw me. But it was weird.”

That’s an understatement. “You’re _ sure _ that’s where you were?”

“Yes! We were able to talk, and he wasn’t speaking some stupid foreign language. And we could talk after he was awake too. He had my body safe, and was taking me towards where we would meet the others. He did the walking, and I read the map and kept watch.”

He pauses and seems to be waiting for you to respond, but you have no idea what to even say.

Lalli adds, “He was really careful with me. He was watching out for frostbite. I didn’t even have to tell him that. Plus when I told him I didn’t want a concussion, he started looking out for my head too.” Another pause. You still don’t know how to respond. “And anyways. We made it back to the others and now we’re fine?”

You know that. You do. It doesn’t help as much as it should. And the longer it takes you to get ahold of yourself, the more you’ll make Lalli worry. But your mind is still racing in circles and your heart is pounding, trying to deal with a danger that’s over and done with. And it’s over, yes, but you’re only just now learning about how bad things were, you weren’t _ there, _Lalli needed your help and you weren’t there for him, and you’re not sure why he’s here now when by all rights he should be dead— 

You have to force yourself to say something. Your voice doesn’t sound quite right when you manage, “When I found you in the water—?” 

“Yes.” Lalli hesitates for a moment. “While I was in Emil’s head— He could hear the voices. And he’s just—” He makes a frustrated, wordless sound. “He’s too _ nice! _I’d tell him something was dangerous, but then it would say ‘oh no, please help me’, and he’d wander right off to ‘help’ and try to get himself eaten! But we were cornered. And if I stayed with him I was going to get him killed, so.” You can feel him shrug against you. “I didn’t know what would happen, but at least it gave him a chance to get away.”

“Lalli.” None of this is actually making you feel any better. But you can feel Lalli starting to fidget impatiently in place. You understand what he’s saying. You can’t tell if he really _ knows _how much danger he was in, and if he doesn’t, you don’t know how you could explain it in a way he’ll be able to see.

He says, “Anyways, it was fine. He took care of me. And I took care of him. And now sometimes we dream together, and it’s weird, but at least we’re able to talk without it being so much trouble. Also, there’s a lady in his dream, and he _ says _ she wasn’t the caretaker of the orphanage where he grew up and everyone else was adopted, but I think he’s just embarrassed. It’s really obvious. Maybe I’ll make him tell me tomorrow night.”

_ “Lalli.” _

The way he shifts against you is distinctly unhappy now. That wasn’t how you wanted this to go. This is— Half of it is already over and done, and half of it is completely new to you. You need time to think through what he’s told you. If you try to do that now, you’re going to upset him, and if you upset him enough, he might just go back to his own woods. Even if the open water is a little safer now, you just… can’t take that, not after everything he’s said, not while you’re wondering what else he hasn’t told you. 

You take a deep breath and let it out as slowly as you can. Then you say, “So you like him.”

He relaxes a little. “Maybe. Just a bit.”

“The others?”

“Reynir’s hair is stupid. But he can be okay, I guess. Mikkel is nice. And Sigrun is too loud, but other than that, she’s fine.”

You wait, but he doesn’t go on. “Is that all?”

He just sighs hard and slumps back against your shoulder.

“Nothing else interesting happened while you were out there?”

“You don’t want to listen to all that.”

You shrug. “I like to listen. It’s been a while since we could sit and talk.”

Lalli starts off slow and tentative. And the first time he mentions Tuuri, he hesitates over her name again. But you listen and take it all in, making quiet noises of acknowledgment when he pauses for them, and he keeps going. You lean back into the rock and shut your eyes, focusing on his words and absorbing it all. Lalli’s back is still against your shoulder and you can feel it when he gestures to make a point. It hurts to hear about Tuuri. And it hurts in a different way to hear all these little things about her last months that she— didn’t tell you herself. You take that in with the rest. 

The words pour out of Lalli. Every so often this happens with him, you know. But you’re reminded that he spent months away from Finland with almost nobody who could speak to him. Or who could listen to him. He has stories about all the other members of his crew, about their cat, about their vehicle, about the things they saw in the silent world. You barely speak at all, only listen to story after story, learning more and more about the people he traveled with, and by the time he finally lapses into silence, almost the whole night has passed you by.

That morning, you wake earlier than you’d expected. You suppose that’s a consequence of trying to spend all your time sleeping. There’s noise coming from the far side of the room, and when you roll over and open one eye, you see quarantine workers setting out serving dishes on the table. It smells good, and you’re hungry. On the other hand, everyone else is up as well, and you’d still prefer to avoid having to deal with the others. You’re debating the merits of trying to sleep for a little longer when Lalli looks up and catches your eye. His friend—Emil—follows Lalli’s gaze and sees you too. And waves. You shut your eyes and groan. On top of that, the cat has apparently decided to share your bed again, and now that she’s been disturbed, has climbed to sit on your leg and is purring loudly and kneading at your hip. You give up.

Today, when you sit up, you’re prepared to ignore the way everyone in the room looks up at you. You focus on dislodging the cat and then on untangling one of her claws from your sheets. By the time she decides it’s not worth using you as a bed and jumps over to the next bunk, the others have turned back to the table and the fresh food. 

You aren’t that surprised when Lalli and Emil linger at the table again when the others have left. Lalli isn’t trying to be subtle, and he hovers all the way through being sure you’ve eaten a satisfactory breakfast. When you finally finish and move to pour yourself a mug of tea, then he slips from his seat. He hooks a finger in the back of Emil’s collar and tugs imperiously. You sip your tea and watch Emil follow him across the room and back to their bunks. Lalli goes straight to the pile of books, picks up the top one, and pushes it into Emil’s hands.

Emil accepts the book, but groans. He bends down, looks through the pile, and begins to pull out a volume much thinner than the one he’s holding.

Lalli lets him take it, but says, “It doesn’t matter. You’re going to have to read both of them eventually.”

The look on Emil’s face communicates his feelings about that well enough, but he doesn’t argue. He sits down on his bed with a heavy sigh and starts to leaf through the first book.

You raise your voice just far enough for Lalli to hear you. “There are easier books here than that.”

He only shrugs. “Why learn slowly when you can learn quickly?”

You’re not as sure of that as Lalli seems to be. Lalli takes a book from the pile, and disappears under his bed. You move to the chair you used yesterday and pick up a book of your own, but you don’t make much progress. You spend more time watching Emil bent over that first book, moving his finger across the page painstakingly slowly, clearly mouthing out the sound of each word as he goes. 

For a little while, you’d manage to focus on your own book, but when you look up again, Emil has gotten stuck. He’s frowning hard at the page. His finger isn’t even moving slowly anymore, it’s just paused in one spot. You see him start to mouth a word silently a few times, but he doesn’t get far. He scrunches his eyes shut and shakes his head, then tries again, speaking out loud this time. That doesn’t go much better.

After a few more failed attempts, Emil bends forward, trying to look under the bed. “Lalli?”

From where you are, you can see that Lalli’s eyes are closed, and the book is lying shut on the floor in front of his nose. It doesn’t really matter if his friend wants to wake him, but force of habit means that before you consciously decide to involve yourself, you’re already saying, “He’s asleep.”

Emil looks up at you with sudden interest, and you try not to wince. He stands and walks over to where you’re sitting, pushing his book out towards you. He says, “Please help with… how to say?”

You tell him. He echoes you—incorrectly—and you repeat the word for him, more slowly. Once he gets it, you look back down to your book, expecting him to go back to his bunk. Instead he drops down into the nearest chair, slumping and letting his head fall back with a heavy sigh before lifting up his book again. You stare. 

He isn’t completely unobservant. He notices you and flushes pink and says, “Sorry— I can leave?”

“It’s fine,” you tell him. It is. You just hadn’t been expecting it.

He thanks you with a smile and goes back to reading. After a moment, you manage to turn your attention to your own book again.

Emil is largely unobtrusive. Every once in a while he leans over to show you another word and ask for a pronunciation, or just what it means. You try to find which words he knows to explain the words that are new to him, with questionable success. You don’t know how much of that book he could possibly be understanding, but he keeps working at it.

When you ask Emil how much of that he’s actually able to read, he says, “One in— four? Five?” He holds up the book and separates out a fraction of the pages from the rest. “Like this.” He sighs, but he’s smiling. “Maybe eventually… one in _ three.” _

At one point, after you’ve walked him through how to say yökyöpeli _and_ explained what it means—it finally clicks when you point at Lalli and say that it’s like _him _when he’s scouting_—_Emil smiles ruefully and lets his head fall back, looking up at the ceiling. “Person of night, nighttime person, okay.” He looks over at you and grins more broadly. “Someday, in Sweden—” He makes a wide, sweeping gesture. _“Revenge.”_ You don’t know what to say to that, but Emil just laughs to himself as he bends over his book again and goes back to reading.

Eventually, you glance up to see Lalli under the bed, still not reading, but with his eyes open, watching you. You raise your eyebrows at him, but he just shrugs and makes no move to join you. He seems perfectly content to stay where he is, up until the quarantine workers come for your daily examination and he slides out and wanders over to nod at you and bump shoulders with Emil. 

That night, you wake up crying.

It isn’t exactly a surprise. You knew it was bound to happen eventually. The only reason it hasn’t happened since— since Tuuri is because you’ve been too frozen and numb to manage it. You wish, a little bitterly, that you could have lasted a little longer, just until you had something resembling privacy again.

Instead you’re trapped in a room with everyone who didn’t bring your sister back from the silent world, and you go from sitting in your forest and drifting through hazy memories and dreams to lying awake in a strange bed, looking at the ceiling, your vision swimming. You blink once, and tears spill from the outer corners of your eyes, running down off the sides of your face.

It’s fine. It is. This isn’t new to you. You keep your breathing as slow and quiet as you can. You can’t blink back the tears but you do your best to focus all your attention on being perfectly still and silent, on not making a single noise that might wake your s— that might wake anyone. 

It isn’t easy. This lasts and _ lasts, _and by the end, when the tears finally slow and stop, your head pounds with the effort of holding it all in. You pull one arm from under the sheets so you can press the heel of your hand to your forehead, trying to relieve some of the pain. 

Your pillow is damp, and you can feel it against your ears and neck every time you shift. You roll up onto one side and shove the pillow a little further towards the wall, looking for a dry spot, so you can hopefully get a little sleep before you have to face the morning. 

And then you see Lalli watching you.

The room is dark, but you can still see him sitting in a chair across the room. He’s curled up tight, his arms wrapped around his legs and his nose pressed into his knees, but his eyes are on you, wide and unblinking. 

You try not to sigh. This is familiar too. It’s been like this since he was young, and it’s something he never grew out of. You had years together, where no matter how you tried to find somewhere private to be alone and fall apart, you’d eventually look up to find him watching you just this way from some corner of the room.

It was perhaps a little easier when he was a child. It’s tempting to cling to that familiar framework even now and think of him in that same comfortable way. But it’s impossible to believe it now, with him well into adulthood, when you’re here surrounded by the crew he scouted for and guided through the silent world. He uncurls himself from the chair, stands, and stretches, and you can’t ignore the way he’s nearly as tall as you are. He crosses the room and for a moment you’re afraid he’s going to say something to you. But he only reaches up to touch you on the shoulder, once, and then slips away.

You don’t hear him climb into his bunk. You do hear a soft, sliding sound— fabric against wood, you think. He must have gone under the bed. From the next bunk over, you _ do _ hear stirring. You breathe as quietly as you can, willing nobody to say anything. There’s a creaking that sounds like it could be someone leaning out over the edge of their bed, but the only thing you hear is Emil whispering, “Lalli?”

If there’s a reply, it’s too soft for you to hear. You shut your eyes and eventually, somehow, manage to sleep.

When you wake in the morning, your head aches and your eyes still feel puffy and swollen. You linger in your bunk, even though that means telling Reynir, and Mikkel, _ and _Emil that you aren’t hungry yet. More than once. And turning down several offers to bring food to your bed. 

It’s fine. Your decision pleases the cat, anyways. She climbs all over you, looking for the perfect place to establish herself. When it seems like she’s speculatively eyeing your face, you finally sit up, set your back against the wall, and place her squarely in your lap. It seems to make her happy enough. She purrs so loudly it’s difficult to hear the conversation at the table and is content to let you pet her until the others are done with their meal and begin to drift to other parts of the room

Lalli stays at the table, and Emil stays with Lalli. Again. And the moment you make a move to climb down to the floor, Lalli starts arranging the remaining food around an empty place at the table.

As you draw closer, you tell him, “I don’t need all that.”

He doesn’t look at you, but he says, “You’re skinny.”

You suppose you are. There was the healing sleep, and then after that— After that, it was weeks before you felt like touching food again, and it was difficult to even taste the food you managed to eat. Then once you went into the forest, you only had the supplies you could carry, and no idea how long you would need to keep yourself alive. It’s too much to think through how to explain even a part of that right now, so you just say, “It doesn’t matter.”

Lalli puts the butter dish down next to the other dishes with a little more force than necessary. “You’re _ skinny.” _

He’s not wrong, it’s just— Fine. It’s fine. You can’t argue with him right now. And once you start, it’s easy to keep eating. Lalli isn’t watching you as closely today. He’s frowning at the table more than he’s looking at you. At one point he kicks Emil’s ankle and says something in Swedish. Emil gets up and walks off, but returns only a few moments later brandishing two kettles.

He says, “Not coffee! Tea and tea.” As he sets them down on the table, he glances off across the room and adds, “Reynir stole.”

“Hey! Even if I can’t understand that, I can still hear my name, you know.”

You shut your eyes and try to ignore the rest. Once Emil moves away, muttering in Swedish, and Reynir stops trying to talk past the language barrier, you relax. 

Lalli leans in and bumps your arm. He nods towards the two kettles. “Chamomile and peppermint.”

“Mm.”

It feels good to eat and drink. Your headache fades faster than you’d expected. You eventually take a mug of tea and retire to the corner of the room again. But you do try to pay a little more attention to the others than you’ve done so far. The Norwegian captain—Sigrun—has commandeered the only chair in the room with rockers. She has one foot braced on the wall, pushing herself back and forth. She’s talking to herself and leafing through what looks to be a children’s book. And you realize that she’s not just reading it, she’s reading it out loud. Her accent is— _ interesting. _ Or you would have realized it was Finnish sooner. 

When she notices you watching, she grins, waves the book at you, and says something incomprehensible. It sounds like a question, but you have no idea what she’s trying to ask, so you hedge your bets and say, “No, thank you,” and look away.

Lalli has pulled his friend over to the far side of the room, and he leans against the wall with his arms crossed as they talk. They’re too quiet for you to even tell if they’re speaking Finnish or Swedish, but you just watch the way they hold themselves. They stand close and comfortable. Emil mirrors Lalli as you watch, also crossing his arms and leaning into the wall. He’s smiling, easy and open, nodding as Lalli says something to him. When Emil replies, you see Lalli smile faintly back at him. 

Good. This is good. You still have… _ questions _ about Lalli’s taste in friends. But do you know that’s less important than the balance of what they share together. And you still don’t see anything there to cause you concern. You’ve worried about Lalli, and there’s no question that it’s a relief to see him like this, at ease and relaxed. You knew he’d be fine, or you wouldn’t have left him behind. It still warms you to _ see _ how Emil likes him. And how Lalli likes Emil in return.

Mikkel distracts you from your thoughts when he walks over to you, carrying a chess set. He holds it up and asks, “Interested?”

You must be in an odd mood. Your immediate instinct is to turn him down, but instead, you find yourself saying, “Yes.”

It isn’t terrible. Mikkel is quiet, relaxed, and undemanding. Once he’s pulled over a side table and set up the chess board, he seems much more interested in making casual conversation than in playing a serious game. The game moves slowly, and it slows even further once Reynir pulls over another chair and joins you. He brings the cat, and she lounges in his lap and bats lazily at the game pieces on the near edge of the board. 

The conversation meanders, and it’s all in Icelandic, so you can’t entirely avoid participating. Reynir and Mikkel seem content to speak mostly to each other with only occasional responses from you, but that only lasts until the conversation drifts to Finnish magic. Reynir has apparently been studying since you last saw him. You mostly let him chatter about what he read in _ this _ Icelandic text, or what his teacher told him, or what he read in this _ other _manuscript— But you can’t help speaking up to correct him when he says something simply wrong. Iceland seems to have some… interesting ideas about Finland. The downside is that it isn’t long before he starts looking to you after every point he shares, waiting expectantly for you to confirm or reject it.

It’s fine. You’ve taught enough mages, you know how to describe magic. It’s simpler, here, where you don’t have to worry about explaining to a young, incautious mage all the ways they need to protect their mind, or risk losing their entire self and being stranded without a way to reach Tuonela. There’s none of that urgency now, and you can just look at the chessboard and quietly correct Reynir whenever he gets something wrong.

You still don’t understand Icelandic magic and aren’t particularly interested in learning more, but he seems like he’s been enjoying himself. He starts getting excited, leaning in towards Mikkel and gesturing with one hand. “It’s really interesting! A lot of people in my class were kids, but one lady was old enough to be my grandmother. The teacher said that magic can wake up in people at any time, and someone might have had the potential to be a mage all their life without realizing. So who knows, you might be able to draw a rune _ now _ and it could work—” 

“It wouldn’t,” you interrupt. He’s leaned far enough forward that the cat manages to reach the board and successfully knocks a pawn to the floor. When you retrieve it and sit up, both of the others are looking at you. You sigh. “Regardless of potential, you need to have some awareness of the spiritual plane before you can affect it to any significant degree.” Anyone from Finland can invoke the gods or attempt to cast a spell, but it would be a blind, undirected effort, and they’d have no idea of its success or failure. “If you begin to regularly sense spirits, while awake or asleep, that’s the first sign that you’re able to interact with them in a controlled way.”

Reynir looks fascinated, and you regret speaking up. “So when I started dreaming— Or, or if _ Mikkel _ started having dreams like those tonight—” 

“He won’t. He’s Danish.” Though you realize that you’re opening the door for him to start interrogating you about Emil, or about Sigrun, and you don’t want to begin that conversation right now. “I don’t know your gods. Ask your teachers when you go back to Iceland.”

Reynir sighs and sits back in his chair. Mikkel shrugs without much concern and reaches out to move a piece on the board. He says, “I’ve had too many jobs without adding mage work to that list.” You still aren’t sure if he even believes magic is real, but you let him turn the conversation back to what Reynir learned in the time after you left Iceland, and you fall silent again, listening and only occasionally talking.

When you move to go to sleep that night, Lalli is waiting next to your bed with his arms crossed, frowning. He isn’t quite looking at you, but he doesn’t move as you approach, and you ask, “What is it?”

He says, “I could visit you tonight.”

“You could do that.” When you’re this close, there’s no real danger in the crossing, especially if you’re ready for him. Perhaps once you’re asleep you’ll begin extending your defenses to cover his forest as well as your own. You should have done that already, you’ve just been… off.

But Lalli is frowning harder now, glaring off to the side. He doesn’t reply for a moment, then abruptly says, “I’m out of stories.”

“What?”

“I told you everything already. All the good stories.”

You wait, but he doesn’t go on. You try, “You don’t need stories to come see me.” He’s never needed them before. 

Lalli only says, “Hhm.”

You aren’t sure what you’re missing. “Do you want to visit me?”

“Do _ you _ want me to visit you?”

Whatever you aren’t getting, it’s something important. But you can’t tell what it is. “If you want to come see me, you don’t need to ask me first. I only want you to stay away if there’s danger.”

He makes another neutral, wordless noise and turns away from you. You aren’t sure what to expect that night, but pay close attention to the edges of your forest. It isn’t long before Lalli shows up, but after he greets you, he stands off away from you and doesn’t make any move to speak to you further. That’s fine, if that’s what he wants. But everything about this has been odd enough that it’s difficult for you not to worry.

You eventually tell Lalli, “Come, sleep here,” so that if anything is wrong, you’ll at least be close enough to do something about it. For a moment, you think he’ll refuse, but he does walk over, with his eyes ever so slightly turned away from you, and curls up on the stone beside you. You sit and listen and don’t watch him too closely, and soon enough he’s dozing beside you, and you manage to relax.

You spend the night focusing on expanding your protections. This way, at least there will be less risk in him going out on the open water. Lalli’s forest is nearly as familiar to you as your own, and extending your defenses to include him feels perfectly natural at this point. It was more strange to only be guarding yourself during the months he was away. You hadn’t expected it to be such a relief to do this again. 

Eventually, you relax enough to drift in and out of sleep beside him. The running water beside you is a soothing, constant murmur, and the wind is just strong enough to feel on your face. You worry at first that you’re going to startle Lalli awake with a nightmare, but when nothing happens, you let yourself sleep deeper, for longer. 

The new defenses you’ve established are a warm sensation in the back of your mind, still just unfamiliar enough to register with your awareness every time you wake up. You wake one last time slightly before morning. You’re still worn thin and tired, but… less than you’ve been for months. As Lalli stirs and sits up, you take the opportunity to look back over the protections around you both, making sure that things are as solid and stable as they should be. 

There’s something that feels odd about Lalli’s forest, though, and you frown. You’d recognize Reynir, given how many times he’s wandered in and out of your dreams, and this is different. You stand and step to where the space is thinnest between your forest and Lalli’s. You don’t try to cross the gap, you only look, trying to spot anything that seems out of place.

And you see a person in there. Your heart starts to pound. Whoever it is—whatever it is—they’re half-hidden behind the trees, and you watch them closely, trying to see if this is an attack, an _ ambush— _

You hear quiet footsteps behind you and Lalli appears at your elbow.

He says, “Oh. Emil. I _ told _ him not to bother coming.”

It takes you a moment. You stare at Lalli. _ “What?” _

He yawns. “I told him I wasn’t going to be there, so he might as well stay in his house tonight. I don’t know why he didn’t listen. Maybe he didn’t understand right.”

_ “Lalli.” _

“I _ told _you we sometimes dreamed together.” He looks away from you and shrugs. “It’s weird. But it’s been fine.”

It took you too long to realize, but now that you know to look for it, you can feel the presence of— of _ something _ that stretches between them, tying one to the other. Your first instinct is to sever it, but you don’t know how badly that could harm one or both of them. And when you reach out to that connection, gingerly pushing at it, you don’t sense anything that feels like death or corruption. Nothing that feels like coercion or malice. And you can’t feel any other ties, to any sort of external force that might have put this link in place. There’s nothing. It’s just the two of them tied to each other in a way you’ve never seen.

Lalli is watching you. He’s already frowning in the way that means he doesn’t see why you don’t already _ understand, _ and— You don’t want to push him too hard right now, but there’s also an outsider, who isn’t a mage, who has a door into his _ mind, _and you need some explanations before you’re going to be comfortable with this.

Before you find a way to say that, Lalli says, “I’m waking up.”

And then he’s gone.

You stay asleep for a little longer, looking across the water into Lalli’s forest, watching Emil wander in and out of the trees. He isn’t trying to do anything, as far as you can tell. You can’t feel any other presence. But feeling him there at all is already wrong. He isn’t a mage, and you know Lalli is too well-trained to accidentally leave paths open into his mind. You can still feel the link between the two of them, even almost _ see _ it when you look the right way. With Lalli awake, that connection stretches from Emil’s chest and into nothingness, but you can still feel Lalli at the other end of it. If this is something Lalli somehow did himself, breaking that tie will hurt him. It will probably hurt Emil too. You know that, but it’s hard to leave it in place, _ knowing _you have no idea what this is.

You wait until Emil fades out of the dream of his own accord, wait a little longer to settle yourself, and then you let yourself wake up.

Lalli avoids answering questions all day. You don’t want to ask him too many things in front of others, even ones with limited Finnish. And you don’t know how much Emil understands of what he hears. But Lalli doesn’t let you pull him aside for long and he doesn’t give you clear answers. He just shrugs and says he already told you when it happened, and that he still doesn’t know why or how. 

You’re torn on whether or not to press him harder that night, but almost the moment you fall asleep, Reynir is there in your woods, waving hello and asking how you’re doing as he trots over to sit beside you. You’re brief with him and not particularly welcoming, but he still sits and chats and _ chats. _You tell yourself that it doesn’t matter. That this is fine. Whatever has happened with Emil and Lalli, it’s been in place for weeks, and you still barely understand what it is. You can spare a night to think it through. 

You might accomplish more thinking if Reynir wasn’t quite so talkative, but also… you aren’t too pleased with how little he recognizes of the dangers in the dream world, and it’s— It’s better to have him inside protections than outside of them. He’s one of the mages who accompanied and protected Lalli and Tuuri. Who still accompanies Lalli. You can give him this much.

But the next night, Reynir again joins you as soon as you begin to dream. And you can tell when you’re being manipulated. You wait for a little while, until the initial rush of chatter has passed. He can speak to you during the day, if he wants, and you don’t understand how he still has so much to say now.

But when he pauses, you tell him, “We’re going to visit Lalli.”

His face is too open for his own good. He says, “Visit Lalli? But why would we need to do that, I don’t understand—?”

You ignore that and let him follow behind you as you stride to the edge of your dream and hesitate only half a moment before you cross the water into Lalli’s. He isn’t there. The dream is empty and quiet, but you can _ feel— _There. Just past the far edges of Lalli’s forest, you can sense something else. It’s unfamiliar, and you move slowly as you approach it.

Reynir still trails behind you, sheepishly mumbling, “It isn’t a big deal, really, they were just planning to have a quiet night in, I guess, and Lalli asked _ me _ if I could do him a favor—” 

You don’t even have to touch the water to cross to the threshold of this new dream. It’s so close you can step from the grass and straight through a door and into an empty hall. There’s nobody in sight, but as you cross the threshold, you hear quiet voices coming from around the corner. Lalli’s you recognize without even needing to think about it. Emil takes you a few seconds longer. You aren’t used to hearing him speak fluently in a comprehensible language.

You lean your back against the wall, shutting your eyes and reaching out will all your senses to try to understand what this place is. It’s… confusing. There’s no taste of corruption, no matter how you look for it. It’s just a dream, somewhere between a memory and a construction, like your forest or Lalli’s. But it’s less real than those places, more ephemeral. There are windows that look out onto an unfamiliar landscape, but you know that nothing exists beyond that glass. It has the feel of a dream that will dissolve when the dreamer wakes, but it feels too solid under your feet to be truly temporary in that way. You can feel the crushing weight of the ocean above you, and all the dead things swimming in it. But behind you, there’s still the door that looks out over the surface of the water, towards Lalli’s forest.

And you can still hear Lalli speaking with Emil. His voice is relaxed and quiet. You can’t quite make out the words, but you hear Emil laugh as Lalli talks to him. 

Reynir leans in towards you and says, “I’ve only been through a couple times, but it seems pretty harmless.”

You wince, but you don’t bother silencing him. It’s probably already too late. 

You’re correct, because the conversation pauses, and a moment later, Lalli leans around the edge of a doorframe, looking at the two of you. He doesn’t say a word, just rolls his eyes at Reynir. Reynir shrugs, helplessly. He’s smiling. You’re expecting Emil to make an appearance too, but past Lalli you hear him arguing with… someone.

Lalli says, “It’s the woman from his dream. It happens, but it doesn’t matter.”

You’re not sure you agree with how casually he dismisses that. But you’re distracted as a large pale red butterfly lands on his head, lazily flapping its wings. It’s the _ image _ of a butterfly, if you don’t look too closely, but not the thing itself. When you lean forward, you see a few more of them fluttering through the room. That can’t be real.

Lalli brushes away the one on his head and sighs. “It’s just a dream. I _ told _you he doesn’t dream the way we do.”

He waits a moment, but you don’t know what to say. This is— outside your realm of experience. You don’t know what’s happening, you don’t _ like _that you don’t know what’s happening, and you can tell Lalli has no interest in listening to you try to explain that right now.

Reynir tugs on your sleeve before you and Lalli can get any more frustrated with each other. “Should we—?”

You don’t know if you should leave, but you let him lead you out of the dream. You cross the water to your forest, only a few steps away. You should have been able to spot Emil’s dream from where you are now, but you couldn’t see a thing until you found it through Lalli’s dream. Every piece of this is strange, and the newness of it all makes you uncomfortable. Those butterflies— Those weren’t part of a memory. They weren’t real enough for that. It’s been years since Lalli dreamed in such an undisciplined way, so they must be from Emil. And he’s not a mage, but if he’s dreaming like this, then does that open his mind to the same sort of attacks a mage would face? You can feel yourself getting more and more tense the longer you contemplate the question.

It’s almost a relief when Reynir starts fidgeting nervously and pulls your attention from your own thoughts. He jumps when he notices you looking at him, but then grins and waves. 

You sigh, and try to force some of the tension out of your shoulders. “What do you want?”

He looks around your forest, smiling. “Oh, I just wanted to see more of this place. It seems like every time I come through, I’m in a rush, and that seems like a shame. And I had some questions for you about Finnish magic?”

“You asked those yesterday.”

“New ones! It’s all so interesting, and I _ really _ want to understand it better.”

You shut your eyes, ignore the beginnings of a headache, and let him distract you. You’re reluctantly impressed at the sheer number of questions he wants to ask, and things he wants to know. You might be more impressed if that curiosity didn’t come at your personal expense. But he asks several questions that are strange enough or complicated enough that you have to think hard to answer him, and it occupies you for most of the night and makes it impossible for you to upset yourself too badly with worrying.

In the morning, Lalli is completely unrepentant. His only explanation for sending Reynir to bother you is a shrug and, “You’re bad at being alone.” 

That’s all you get from him. And you can’t get him to agree to let you be in the future either. He just repeats, more firmly, _ “You’re bad at being alone.” _ You can’t fight this right now. The best you manage is that he agrees that the next night, he’ll visit you, and you’ll start teaching him how to expand his protections to shield the dream of Emil’s house from anything that might sense and attack it.

That occupies your nights. The problems you’re trying to solve and the interruptions Lalli insists on sending your way keep you distracted. The days are more difficult.

You’re speaking with the others more now, but you avoid the discussions about what people plan to do after quarantine. There’s no graceful way to pretend you can’t hear these conversations, so you just flatly ignore them and refuse to participate. You pet the cat instead, keep your eyes locked on her, and act like you can’t hear anything happening around you.

And you know that isn’t a perfect solution. You know you should be thinking about this. It’s just— unfair. You hadn’t expected you’d ever need to deal with this issue. And here, _ now, _ you don’t know what you can do. Staying at Keuruu would be easiest in some ways. Just go back behind the walls and bury yourself in the military routine. And try to ignore the gaping hole in your life where Tuuri used to be. You know you can’t do it. 

But what else is there for you to do? You were barely able to force yourself to leave Keuruu in the first place, and that was only when you managed to convince yourself that you might be able to help, to accomplish… something. You’ve relearned your lesson. The world is a terrible place. You don’t know how you’re supposed to go out into it all over again and somehow believe that you’ll be able to build and keep some kind of life worth having.

The discussion stretches over multiple days, and you refuse to acknowledge it. Enough of it happens in Icelandic that you gather Mikkel and Sigrun plan to travel to Norway, with the cat— unless something else comes up. People glance your way when that nebulous ‘something else’ is mentioned, but you ignore it. Reynir is insistent that any or all of you will be welcome at his home again. Mikkel patiently translates Emil’s regular innocent little asides about the many wonders of Swedish technology.

You shouldn’t be surprised when Lalli makes your decision for you. And for Emil. He’s been quiet for most of these conversations, but finally announces it loudly, in Finnish, without bothering to translate it into Swedish. “We’ll go to Iceland.”

Emil translates for him, but pauses as soon as he’s done, and in Finnish says, “We?”

“You,” Lalli says. “Me.” From the corner of your eye, you see him give you a pointed look. “Onni.”

You stay quiet. It’s fine.

And you can see the way Emil grins at Lalli. “We can do that.”

Lalli smiles back at him. “For the rest of summer, at least. Maybe we’ll travel this winter.” Then he gives you another look. “Unless my stupid cousin has any better ideas.”

His stupid cousin does not. You don’t particularly want to go to Iceland. But you don’t want to go anywhere right now, and it’s no worse than any other location he could have chosen. Emil translates for Mikkel, who translates for Reynir, and the discussion picks up again, but Lalli keeps watching you.

Lalli doesn’t say anything to you until that evening, when he shoos Emil away and pulls you to the side of the room. He’s more tense now, standing with his shoulders ever so slightly hunched. He studies you again, and it’s like the first days of quarantine, where you couldn’t tell what he was looking for in you. After a moment, he says, “You _ are _ coming to Iceland, right?”

You sigh, but, “Fine.”

He frowns at you like that’s not quite right. “Promise.”

“I’ll come to Iceland.”

He still doesn’t look entirely happy, but you can see him relax a little. He looks off into a corner of the room and says, “What happened to the bear I carved? The one from last summer.”

You blink, confused. It takes you a moment to reorient. “It’s still in Keuruu.” You knew Tuuri hadn’t planned their departure as well as she could have. You’d hoped that was a sign she could still be persuaded away from leaving, but— Once they were gone, you’d gathered up the rest of their belongings and paid for them to be stored. It had felt like preparing for them to return would somehow make it happen.

“And my sweater, the big white one?”

“Do you want it back?”

He doesn’t really answer, only says, “Hmm.” But you take the hint.

The next time the quarantine workers come to the room, you pull one aside and begin arranging to have your belongings retrieved from storage. The worker has been at Keuruu for years and knows your family, and you can give her precise directions to where your things are. It’s all packed into wooden trunks you purchased, tucked into one of the warehouses inside the fortress walls. It only needs to be taken to whatever ship Lalli decides you’ll board after the quarantine is over.

When the worker starts to offer you her condolences, your chest clenches, and it’s all you can do to keep your face neutral and nod politely until she finishes and leaves.

It’s a welcome distraction when Emil touches your arm and asks you to explain a Finnish idiom to him. You don’t even mind spending the rest of the afternoon sitting in a chair with Emil nearby, making slow progress through your book while he makes slower progress through his.

Several times, Lalli comes to you to demand you confirm, again, that you’ll go to Iceland. You agree, easily enough, but you don’t know why he’s asking. You tell him, “I already promised.” He doesn’t say anything to that, just crosses his arms and clenches his jaw and glares at the walls. Once, you try to ask him what’s wrong, but he just acts like he didn’t hear you and leaves to go talk to Emil.

Thankfully, Lalli and Reynir deal with arranging your transport to Iceland. You… watch. They work through one of the quarantine workers too, one who’s fluent in Finnish and Icelandic. They both speak to him without being able to speak to each other, and you’re aware that you could probably help this go more easily. But you stay on the far side of the room, far enough away that you can’t properly hear the conversation. You’re trying not to think about what it means to leave Keuruu again, to leave Finland. Emil joins you and watches them, but he’s relaxed and smiling, sitting with his legs crossed and one foot bouncing in the air, humming quietly to himself. 

The end of quarantine feels unreal, even when it’s actually happening. You collect up your belongings. It ought to be a relief— It _ is _a relief, but it’s a new yawning pit of uncertainty in front of you, where there’s no shape or direction in your life, and you still feel too frozen and empty to choose a direction yourself. You’re letting Lalli lead you, for now. You’re fine with that. If it makes him feel better— You’re fine. But eventually he won’t need that crutch anymore, and you don’t know what you’ll do with yourself.

As you’re watching Emil and Lalli gather the last of their things, Sigrun says something loud and Norwegian to you. Mikkel says, more calmly, “She says Finnish is a hellish language invented to torture people and she will absolutely never learn to speak it. And that if you want to see the cat again, you’ll _ have _ to come visit us this winter.”

You don’t have a response to that, but he doesn’t seem to be waiting for one. You hang back as the others say their goodbyes, and watch as Mikkel, Sigrun, and the cat turn down a hallway and disappear from view.


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

You walk out of the quarantine facility and straight onto the Icelandic ship. And are immediately escorted into another quarantine room. This— _ This _is what you remember. The bright lights and low ceiling and row after row of short glass walls dividing long, narrow spaces just wide enough for a bed and a table to sit side by side. You freeze mid-step, and for a long, awful moment you can’t force yourself to move or speak. 

Reynir is the one to have the argument with the Icelandic quarantine worker about how you _ just _ finished quarantine, literally minutes ago, didn’t they see you walk from the building, don’t they have your records— Emil complains loudly in Swedish, for all the good it does any of you. Lalli slinks up behind your shoulder and hovers without quite touching, leaning forward and looking around the room with a flat, unhappy expression.

It’s out of your control. You’re told that the quarantine you went through might satisfy _ Finnish _ standards, but you aren’t going to Finland, are you. The worker’s voice is mildly disapproving as she notes that records show several of you just recently returned from a different trip to the silent world, went through quarantine before entering Iceland, and _ ought _ to have expected a similar protocol to be in place following this trip, so _ really _ she doesn’t know why this would be such a surprise. 

She acts like it’s a major concession that they’ll account for the two weeks of quarantine you went through at Keuruu and tells you that you should be grateful it will only take another two weeks before you’re cleared to enter Iceland. When Reynir says that maybe you actually want to leave this ship and travel somewhere else, she smiles and says that you certainly can do that, but you’ll have a rejection of Icelandic quarantine on your records and _ may _have difficulties securing passage or entry to major settlements for the next few weeks.

It’s fine. You manage to find your words again and interrupt Reynir to tell her that you’ll take the quarantine. Reynir needs to travel to Iceland anyways. It’s where his family is. You might still have enough local contacts to find ships that will accept your current quarantine status, but you just— You don’t even know where you’d go. You have no idea how you’d manage to have all those conversations and negotiate with all those people, and even if you did, you don’t have anyone or anything waiting for you.

Lalli lurks so close behind your arm that you’ll run into him if you turn too quickly. He doesn’t look happy. Neither do the others. Emil is still muttering under his breath as they escort you into your little cells. Your heart starts racing from the moment the door shuts behind you. Reynir is one one side of you, Lalli on the other. Emil is in the cell past Lalli’s. 

You stand where you are for a minute—longer than a minute—trying to focus on everything about this room that’s different than it was before, with Lalli and Tuuri. The room is larger. The ceiling is higher. The floor is a darker color. There are plenty of little details that you can focus on to remind yourself that this _ is _ different, but none of it does you any good. You just finished two weeks of quarantine, you know there’s nothing left for you to worry about, that your biggest concern right now _ ought _to be boredom, and none of it does you any good. 

You aren’t sure how long you stand there frozen. Too long. When you finally force yourself to _ move _ again, the others are all settled into their cells. You don’t see Lalli at first, and then you look down. He’s underneath his bed, lying flat, with his head turned in your direction, watching you. 

It’s too much right now. You don’t mind that he’s there, or— or if he wants to keep an eye on you. But you can’t look at him right now. You lie down on your bed, feeling like your body is floating away from you and out of your control. At first you stare upwards, but that’s even worse. All you can see is the glass walls around you and above you, and then the bright, sterile white of the quarantine room ceiling. Your throat is beginning to close and your eyes are burning, so you turn onto your stomach instead, and press your face into your pillow. You know Lalli will know what that means, but it’s fine. It’s fine. 

By the time that’s done, you feel exhausted, sick, and your head aches, and it takes you too long to fall asleep. But the moment you’re in your forest, you take on the shape of your luonto and fly up into the treetops. It’s a good decision. It isn’t long before Reynir wanders in, calling hello and looking for you. You’re not in any shape to deal with him now, whether he’s doing this on his own or whether Lalli put him up to it. Your forest has regrown enough that he can’t see you through the branches, and you don’t answer him when he asks if you’re there.

It isn’t a good night. You try to rest, but wake up from nightmares over and over. Once, you’re so disoriented you try desperately to take flight as a branch rots away beneath your feet, and it takes you much too long to realize that you aren’t asleep anymore, you’re lying awake in your bed.

You don’t look around you. Lalli is right beside you and he’s always been too observant, but you’d rather believe that perhaps, somehow, he missed this. You don’t want to even think about how much the others might have seen. When you finally give up on the rest of the night, all three of them are still asleep. Your head never really stopped pounding, but now it hurts worse than it did yesterday.

Water. You should at least drink some water. It’s a struggle to push your way upright, and your vision swims. There’s a tray of food on the floor just inside the door of your cell—you hadn’t even noticed when they put that there—but just looking at it makes your stomach turn. You go to the little bathroom instead and pour a cup of water there. You have to drink it in tiny sips, and even that is almost too much.

When you come out, Lalli is awake, but none of the others are. He’s still under his bed, and turns his head to look at you, though he doesn’t speak. He doesn’t look like he slept well. 

“Do you need different blankets?” Despite the water, your throat is raw and your voice is hoarse. “A different pillow?”

Lalli doesn’t answer you. He closes his eyes for a few seconds, and for a moment you think he’s ignoring you. Then he opens them again and even if you can’t hear it, you can see him sigh. He looks up at your face, then, pointedly, toward your untouched tray of food. Then back at your face.

“I’m not hungry,” you tell him.

He just stares. You finally turn away. The other two are beginning to stir now. You sit on the edge of your bed and avoid looking at your food. You should eat. You ought to be hungry. But just thinking about it makes you feel ill. When you hear Emil tell Lalli good morning, from the corner of your eye, you see Lalli roll over to look towards him. He doesn’t say anything, and after a moment, Lalli settles flat again, staring up at the bottom of his bed. When you look properly at him again, his eyes are closed, but you don’t think he’s sleeping.

Reynir tries to tell _ you _ good morning. You can’t find the words to answer him. The silence is mercifully short before he moves on to greeting Lalli, and then Emil. He and Emil exchange a few words, some in Swedish, some—apparently—in Finnish. You privately shift your opinion of Emil’s Finnish to be slightly more charitable. But the two of them have to speak uncomfortably loud to hear each other past the glass walls and cells in between them, and you’re glad they end their conversation quickly.

After some time, Lalli comes out from under his bed. He sits in a chair and leans against the wall separating him from Emil. If they speak, it’s too soft for you to hear. You think that eventually, he dozes there, still leaning into the glass. Reynir doesn’t try to speak to you again, but you hear movement in his cell behind you and occasional tuneless humming.

Half the day has probably passed before you manage to eat anything. Even then, it isn’t much, but you’ve started to feel dizzy whenever you move. When the quarantine workers come by to take your untouched food and replace it, you know you need to force yourself to eat _ something. _The porridge the workers give you isn’t noticeably different from what you were given in the Keuruu quarantine, but here, it’s difficult to even stomach the idea of eating it. You manage, somehow. You try to separate yourself from the act, but even then, you eat less than half of your latest meal before you have to set the food aside.

It still helps, which you resent. It doesn’t take care of everything, or even _ much, _but you can feel the difference. “Lalli,” you say. His eyes open, though he doesn’t move apart from that. You gesture at the meal the workers left him. “You need to eat.”

He looks over at your plate of unfinished food, then looks away.

“Lalli,” you repeat. But he ignores you.

You think Emil might be the one to scold him into eating. At the very least, he holds a long enough one-sided conversation that Lalli doesn’t go back to sleep, and instead he eventually heaves a sigh, picks up the tray of food, and starts methodically picking it apart and nibbling on some choice bits. You don’t manage more than a few bites further of yours, but you keep an eye on Lalli’s progress. At some point, Emil persuades him into mounting a chessboard on the wall between them and beginning a game, though you aren’t at all certain they’re playing by any actual rules.

Every so often, Reynir says something to you, though you don’t manage to reply. It’s all perfectly casual and unimportant. But you can’t make the connection between hearing his words and formulating an answer. Every so often he says something to Emil, and Emil usually responds, but you… can’t. You can’t manage to reply when Emil speaks to you either, though he keeps trying. And you can tell you’re avoiding looking at Emil and Reynir too closely. You keep at least a part of your attention on Lalli throughout the day, but looking at the others is just— too much.

That night, you aren’t surprised when Lalli eventually joins you in your forest. Words have always been a little easier in here, so you manage to ask him how he’s doing. He says that he’s fine, though you can’t get much more from him than one word answers. At the very least, you sit down on the bank of your stream and invite him sleep here tonight. He curls up in the space beside you easily enough, with his back pressed against the side of your leg. You lean back into the rocks, shut your eyes, and try to rest.

The next day isn’t any better. You didn’t have any reason to think it would be, but experiencing it— You can’t shake the constant awareness that you have another week and a half left to endure, and your chest is locked so tight it’s difficult to breathe. You manage to eat a little again, but taste none of it. 

Lalli seems better, at least. You try to focus on that. He eats more today. He answers Emil, and even says a few words to Reynir. That’s good. You can’t do much for Lalli, and you can do less for Reynir. The more they’re able to lean on each other during this, the better. Emil tries, several times, to speak to you, but you aren’t able to answer him. You eat enough to keep yourself from feeling too ill, but not much more than that.

You barely do anything that day, but you still feel exhausted long before you feel able to rest. Even once you lie down, it takes you too long to fall asleep. 

That night— You’d expected Lalli, perhaps. Or Reynir. You hadn’t expected _ both _ of them, arriving together. With Emil in tow. You aren’t exactly… upset. Or angry. Those aren’t quite right. And there isn’t anything _ wrong _with this. But you don’t particularly appreciate surprises. Especially when it looks like people have been planning things behind your back.

But before you can figure out what you want to say to Lalli, he looks from you to Emil, back to you, nods once, and fades out of the dream. It takes you a second to reorient, and by then Reynir is beginning to disappear into the air as well. He says, “Oh nooo, I think I’m waking up, _ super _ sorry—” 

And then it’s only you and Emil.

The only consolation is that Emil looks about as horrified as you feel. Both of you are frozen for a long moment, and then he buries his face in his hands. You hear him mutter, _ “Gods.” _After that, he presses the heels of his hands to his temples, his eyes squeezed shut.

After a moment he drops his hands to his sides and looks up at you. Conversationally, he says, “I’m going to strangle both of them.”

You just look at him without replying. His eyes widen and he lifts his hands again. “Not literally! No actual strangling. It’s just a, a, you know, an expression—”

“I know.”

“Oh.”

Words are easier in dreams, but you have no idea what else to say. You don’t think Emil does either. The silence stretches out and grows more uncomfortable with each passing moment. 

Eventually, he says, “How did they do that? Just— disappear that way?”

“They woke up.”

“You can _ do _that? How?”

You watch him. You don’t know what he’s looking for. “By waking up.”

Emil stands where he is for a moment, and makes some interesting faces as he does— whatever he’s trying to do. Wake up, you suppose.

When he finally gives up, he sighs and turns a little away from you. His face is very red. “Sorry. I can’t figure out how to do it. Which I guess is pretty obvious. _ Seriously, _I’m sorry about this, I had no idea they were planning to do that.”

His voice trails off like he’s expecting some kind of response from you. So you say, “It’s fine.”

There’s another awkward pause, but this time he’s faster to break the silence. “So, um, I’m not exactly sure how this dreaming works. If you wake up too, would that reset me? Or maybe you have another way to kick me out of here. If I was on the water again, I might be able to retrace my way to Lalli’s place—” 

“No.” You shut your eyes for a moment, and let yourself sigh, just once. “You have no magical abilities of your own, correct? It wouldn’t be safe for you to leave by yourself. You can spend the night here.”

That isn’t really the whole picture. If you woke up now, nothing would happen to him. But he’d still be in your dream, in your _ mind, _and just having strangers here in the first place pushes the limits of what you’re willing to endure. The idea of him being here alone, unattended, free to do whatever he wanted— You refuse to even consider it. And you can’t sense Lalli in his own forest, and no matter what Lalli seems to be comfortable with, you aren’t leaving Emil unattended in his mind either.

But Emil has no idea about that. He just smiles, easy and open, and thanks you. He repeats a few more times that he didn’t know his friends were planning to leave him here, that he’s _ very _sorry to impose. You make a few noises of acknowledgment as he talks, but he doesn’t seem like he needs you to say much of anything.

Once he’s done with his thanks and apologies, he shifts in place, rubbing one arm with his hand, looking at the trees around him and up into the sky. “So… do all Finns dream in places like this? Or is this more of a mage thing? Or I guess it could be a Hotakainen thing, I wouldn’t know. Do you know it’s a dream because of the flying fish?”

_ “What.” _

Emil points at the sky, but you’ve already spotted them. You’re a little angry with yourself. Fish swimming through the air should have been obvious to you long before now. This is your space, _ your mind, _and you have no excuse for failing to notice something like this. It’s just an extra layer of irritation that they would need to be pointed out to you by an uneducated intruder who doesn’t know the first thing about how dreaming works.

And while you were distracted, he’s wandered over to the edge of a pond and is busy looking down into the water. He says, “Yeah, flying fish and swimming birds. Just like Lalli.”

You take a deep breath and collect yourself. This isn’t his fault, you tell yourself. It isn’t even under his control. You tell him, “It’s because _ you’re _ dreaming.”

He glances at you and points at his own face, as though you might possibly mean someone else. Truth be told, you aren’t as certain as you could be. Probably because you’ve never had to deal with a foreign mage dragging people in and out of your dreams before now. But you think you understand. He’s a Swede, so he’ll be less magical than a brick. He doesn’t—_ can’t _—dream in the same way that you and Lalli do. 

“You’re asleep,” you tell him. “Haven’t you had dreams like this before? Dreams where the sky is—” You cut yourself off. You don’t want to give him any ideas. “If you saw this in Lalli’s forest and in my forest, it’s coming from you.”

“Wow.” He doesn’t say anything for a moment, just reaches out towards a small fish swimming past him. It darts around his hand and continues on its way. He says, “Lalli wanted to go fishing, I think. But the water was full of birds and the fish were all in the air. It wasn’t working. He still tried, though.” He’s smiling fondly at the memory, and still looking out at the fish weaving through the trees, so you’re free to study him as openly as you want.

“Have you had dreams like this before?”

“Hm. Not for a long time. I can’t remember any since—” He cuts himself off, shaking his head. “When I was little, yeah. I think so.”

If he isn’t a mage— He shouldn’t be here. But he is. And he’s bending the shape of your forest to match his old dreams. You still aren’t certain how this works or why it’s happening. But non-mages don’t carry the memory of their dreams the way mages do. They aren’t _ aware _ in the same way. Whatever it is that Emil and Lalli share, you still don’t know how much of this he’ll even recall in the morning.

It’s more uncertainty than you prefer. There are too many unknowns, too many _ maybes. _But you also have to endure this night one way or another. And you won’t have a better opportunity to speak to Emil without having to fight his limited grasp of Finnish.

You realize you’ve been standing in the same spot ever since Reynir brought the others into your woods. You glance around and find a boulder large enough to fit two people. You turn and walk to it, and say, “Come, sit.”

Emil follows you easily enough, though you have to point at the spot beside you and tell him again to _ sit _ before he actually takes a seat. Even then, he fidgets, sitting a little too stiffly with his hands braced on his knees, stealing sideways glances at you that are probably more noticeable than he means them to be.

You shut your eyes and take one slow breath. “Tell me about Lalli.”

That makes him turn to face you more fully. Your eyes are still shut, but you can hear and feel the way he moves. You focus on that, focus on the rhythm of your breathing and everything you can sense around you.

Emil says, “You don’t mean— Not about who he is? You already know him, right? You grew up with him. Unless this is part of the dream thing—” 

“Mm.” You don’t say anything more at first, but he still goes silent. After a moment, you add. “What you know of him. How you met.”

“How we _ met.” _ He laughs once, breathlessly. “Oh, that was embarrassing.”

Your first impulse is to frown, but you keep your face still and wait for him to continue.

“So Lalli and—” He hesitates over the name. “Tuuri had come to Sweden, which is where I was meeting them with my aunt and uncle. Only I, ah, may have misunderstood a few details, and when they arrived, I didn’t have time to get myself ready to _ greet _ them, and I was an absolute mess. Tuuri and I didn’t get much of a chance to talk until we were on our way to Mora, and Lalli and I couldn’t talk at all back then, but while I was speaking with Tuuri he was just _ looking _at me, and I suddenly remembered that someone had spilled food all over me while I was waiting for them at the station.”

He pauses like he’s waiting for some kind of reply, so you make a noise of acknowledgment.

“And after that I was just— You know how after something like that, you’d just rather ignore the person who pointed out the problem. But when I went to get food and came back with a sandwich, he was watching me still, and I just _ knew _ he was waiting for me to spill it all over myself. I’m still sure that was it, I should remember to ask him about that later. But when I got distracted and looked away for a moment, I turned back, and he’d stolen all the meat out of my sandwich.”

You can’t help sighing. “Lalli.”

Emil just laughs. “Even before we knew each other, it was more funny than anything! There was plenty of food to go around, and I was able to go make another sandwich and bring him back more of the meat.” He pauses for a moment, thinking. “After that... we were at Mora. But we didn’t have much to do with each other until we were on the Dalahästen. He was the first one to realize there was, you know, a giant coming in, and I followed him up to the front of the train, and—” 

Your eyes snap open and you don’t hear the rest. The danger is long past, you know that, and you _ know _you keep reacting this way when it won’t do you any good, but your heart is still pounding. “A giant?”

He freezes for a moment and turns a little further towards you. “A… yes. Lalli and Tuu— they didn’t mention?”

“No.” You force your eyes shut again, so you don’t have to see the way he’s looking at you.

“Oh.” There’s silence for a few seconds. You ought to break it, but you don’t know how. Emil adds, “I’m sure nobody was trying to hide it from you?”

You don’t know if that’s right. But you don’t want to discuss it. So you just say, “Hm.”

“And we were fine! Lalli didn’t even have a scrape afterwards, and Tuuri was never anywhere near it. I’m sure it just— slipped their minds.”

You don’t even manage an agreeable sort of noise that time. You just keep your eyes shut and focus on breathing evenly.

The quiet lasts long enough that you almost expect Emil to get up and go wandering. You don’t want him loose in your forest. You also don’t know if you’ll stop him if he decides to leave you in peace right now. But even when the silence stretches to several uncomfortable minutes, he doesn’t go. You hear him shift in place, but he stays where he is.

After some time, he ventures. “And, ah. You’ve probably heard it from Lalli already, but I pretty much owe him my life. He was amazing, especially at the end when we were stranded on our own. I wouldn’t have made it through without him helping me.”

That, you can reply to. “He’s mentioned it.”

He sighs. “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay that. He’s brushing it off like it’s nothing, but I feel like I _ need _ to, you know?”

From what you heard, _ you _owe Emil a great more than you’d ever be able to pay back. It’s thanks to him that you have any family left at all. But your throat closes just thinking that, and you aren’t even going to try to figure out how to say it.

“I don’t suppose you’d have any ideas for me?”

You pause to think about how to answer that, or _ if _ you want to answer at all. Before you can come to a decision, Emil speaks up again.

“Hey, I recognize that rug.”

_ What— _You have to look around for a moment before you understand. But the stream in front of you is no longer water. It’s a faded, patterned rug. You’re still staring when Emil bends to pick up a small stone and tosses it out into the water. Rug. The stone bounces along the rug and gradually comes to a rest, but just downstream, you see a fish—bird—momentarily breach the surface and slip back down out of sight.

And just across what _ should _ be the water, you can see a window set into the side of a tree, overlooking an unfamiliar landscape. You shut your eyes again. This might not be under his control, but you’re _ not _ dealing with this right now.

Emil has gone off on some tangent while you were distracted. It sounds like he’s trying to tell you about how his father imported this rug (the rug that should be your stream, in _ your forest) _ from Iceland at great expense, and it’s handmade work, _ true _craftsmanship, and— You let the words slide past you. You were right, that he’s not dreaming like you or Lalli. Even a completely untrained mage would be more lucid than this.

Still, now you have to wonder whether you ought to try bringing him back to his senses or letting him drift this way for the rest of the night. The idea of letting him ramble and ignoring him is intensely appealing, though you do have to wonder what else he’ll do to your forest before he wakes up. Though the longer this goes on, the more certain you are that he’s experiencing this like a true dream, where he might remember flashes of it in the morning but almost everything will slip away from him. 

And now he’s trying to tell you about paintings which, thankfully, have yet to appear hanging from your trees. You can safely ignore him. You’ll endure this night, and then you’ll find a way to impress upon Lalli and Reynir that they are _ never _to do this again.

Out of nowhere, Emil says, “Are you angry with Lalli?”

It takes you a moment to understand. Because you’re certain you must have misheard. But no, that was exactly what he said, and cold anger floods your body. You don’t remember standing, but you’re on your feet glaring down at him, and you can _ feel _ your forest reacting to your emotions, and you ought to be able to control yourself better than this, but— 

With an effort, you find your voice. “Do you want to repeat that?”

Emil looks up at you, and you can see the moment where he actually focuses on you. His eyes go wide and he flinches away, holding up his hands between you. “That is, what I meant— I mean it’s just—” 

Your voice is quiet and icy. “Maybe you’d like to reconsider whether this is a question you should be asking.”

“That sounds like you’re… not angry?”

All you do is look at him.

“It’s just—! I mean. Oh, this was a bad idea.”

“Yes.”

He winces, but presses on. “Lalli seems… stressed?”

There are a lot of things you could say to that. You don’t voice any of them. You just look away. You have some vague idea of walking to the far side of your forest, or spending the rest of the night in the branches. But you— It feels too much like running. You settle for turning around so all Emil can see of you is your back.

There’s silence for a moment. Then Emil adds, “He’s been worried about you.”

You have to close your eyes. “I know,” is all you manage. And then you give up on not running. You take to the air and settle on a low branch, one that’s high enough to be out of Emil’s reach and sheltered enough to be partially hidden, but where you can still keep an eye on him.

Once you stop answering him and it’s difficult for him to keep you in view, it isn’t long before he slips back into dreaming. You do your best to ignore him and the changes he makes to your forest for the rest of the night, with limited success. But all you need to do is reach the morning and then you’ll make sure you never have to deal with this again.

The next morning, you stay asleep until Emil is safely out of your forest. Once he’s gone, you let yourself wake. When you sit up, Emil already up, yawning and stretching and moving about in his cell. You wait until he goes into his bathroom, and immediately snap, _ “Lalli.” _

Lalli doesn’t seem at all ashamed. Or cowed. You make it very, very clear how you feel, but you don’t get him to agree to anything. _ Fine. _You have limited time before Emil comes back out, and you’re not having this conversation when he can listen in on it. And you haven’t even begun with Reynir yet. When you round on him, he winces and holds up his hands in surrender. He takes the lecture without arguing, although when you tell him to explain himself, all he does is shrug helplessly.

You force yourself to stop after that, even though you don’t trust that either of them have learned any sort of lesson. But Emil is back in the open part of his cell now, and whether he remembers last night or not, you don’t want to do this with him watching. 

This has woken you up more thoroughly than any of the other activities available to you in quarantine, and you still feel restless. You eat more of your food than yesterday, just for the sake of it being something to do. You’re even motivated enough to look through the bookshelf in your cell to see if anything looks interesting. You notice almost all the books are in Icelandic, with a light scattering of other languages. There are only two slim volumes in Finnish, and you make a note to yourself to keep an eye on Lalli as time passes. You pick one of the Icelandic books at random and sit down in a chair.

The energy burns itself out quickly, and you’re soon left feeling hollow and exhausted again, staring at the pages of the book without reading. It’s about what you expected. You just have to remember that any time you manage to pass—no matter how—is less time you have left to endure in the quarantine. 

When you glance around, Reynir is reading as well, sitting with one leg crossed over the other and his foot idly bouncing. Emil and Lalli are talking again, both of them sitting together against the glass wall in between their cells. Emil is speaking quietly, but quickly, gesturing with his hands for emphasis. You can’t quite make out what he’s saying, but it sounds Swedish, and Lalli seems relaxed and just leans on the glass with his eyes half closed, so you don’t feel too concerned.

That night, you’re prepared to go find Lalli if he doesn’t show up himself. But almost as soon as you fall asleep, he’s there. When you let him into your dream, he walks over to you easily enough. You’re trying to decide how to lecture him, but he doesn’t give you time for that.

He looks you up and down once, though you have no idea what he expects to see. Then he says, “Come on,” turns on his heel, and starts walking back to the edge of your forest.

“What?”

Lalli pauses just long enough to give you an impatient look over his shoulder, with his weight still balanced on his toes, leaning forward. “Come _ on,” _he repeats. You don’t move. He sighs and rolls his eyes. “You keep being weird about the dream thing. So I’ll take you to see it up close, and then you can stop worrying at me all the time.”

You could argue at some length about that. Especially given how he’s been dodging _ all _ of your attempts to talk to him about it. And just being able to study this… _ thing _ is no excuse to stop worrying, not if you still can’t understand it.

But you don’t say anything. You just follow Lalli as he leads the way out of your dream. You’re expecting him to go to his forest, but as he reaches the open water, he pauses, turns, and heads in a different direction.

You aren’t happy about that, but with an effort you remain silent and continue to follow in his footsteps. And— Now that you think to look for it, you can see the shining connection from Lalli’s chest stretching out over the water in the same direction that he’s leading you. He seems unaware of it himself, but still walks out across the water with complete confidence.

Still, being out on the open water without a destination in sight doesn’t make you happy. But before you say something pointed about the dangers of this world, you see something come into view. As you draw closer, you can tell that it’s a wooden door, propped open and well-lit. Logically, you know this wasn’t a long trip, barely further than Lalli’s forest would have been, but you’re still on edge and tense after crossing the water like this.

The house is much the same as it was before. Nevertheless, you study it closely as Lalli leads you along the hall and towards the sound of voices. The simultaneous awareness of the open water just past the open door and the weight of the ocean above your head is still disorienting, but you do your best to ignore it.

You aren’t terribly surprised to see Reynir sitting on a couch next to Emil behind a table piled with food. They’re having… some kind of loud, energetic argument, but it cuts off the moment you and Lalli walk into the room. They both stand to greet you, talking over each other, though Emil’s cheeks are still flushed and you see him shoot Reynir a dirty sideways look.

Lalli nods to them both and says a few quiet words, but they don’t seem to require any response from you, so you remain silent. Once that’s all done, Emil and Reynir return to the couch, though they shift to the side so that there’s an open space left next to Emil. You try to wave Lalli down into the space, but he’s already tossing his cloak off to the side and perching on the arm of the sofa, and he just settles in and ignores you. Fine, it doesn’t matter. You take a seat between Emil and Lalli. 

Just a moment later, a woman you’ve never seen before bustles in from what looks to be a kitchen, carrying a cake. You can tell just by looking at her that she isn’t real. Lalli leans over towards you and says, “She runs the orphanage.”

Emil stiffens and turns in his seat. “Lalli, I told you— Have you been telling other people I’m an orphan?” He turns to Reynir, “Has he been telling _ you _this is an orphanage??”

Reynir shrugs a little helplessly. “I’m sure lots of people are orphans? I don’t really know what Swedish orphanages look like, though—”

Emil covers his face with both hands and groans loudly as he slumps back into the cushions. Lalli reaches past you to pat him on the head. Emil crosses his arms across his chest and looks away from him, but allows the patting to continue.

The woman speaks up. “Emil dear, I don’t think your father would like you bringing so many people over—” 

“My father said I can do _ whatever I want!” _ he snaps. “Can’t you see that we’re _ busy?” _

Your eyebrows shoot up at the way the tone of his voice changes. From the corner of your eye, you see Reynir looking similarly shocked. You turn towards Lalli a little, with an unspoken question, but he just shrugs and looks unconcerned. 

After a moment, though, Emil says, “Oh, that was— so rude. Sorry. I _ don’t _do that anymore, promise.”

Lalli nudges you in the side. “That’s what I told you. About him being part of the dream.”

Emil adds, “I used to be… like that. But I’m not now. This is _ so _embarrassing. Lalli, isn’t there a way to fix this?”

Lalli just shrugs without answering. You don’t really want to speak up, but if Lalli isn’t going to tell him, you probably should. “You aren’t a mage. I doubt you’ll ever be fully lucid in your dreams.” On second thought, you doubt he’ll even remember hearing that in the morning. You might as well have stayed quiet.

On the other side of the couch, Reynir says, “If you’re an orphan, how do you have a father?”

That argument is energetic enough that you tune it out, especially when the source of the confusion seems fairly clear to you. You give Lalli a pointed look, but he only shrugs, clearly pleased with himself. Then he uncurls a little, lowering one foot to the floor, so he can bend forward enough to reach the table. He picks up an entire cake and a single fork. And puts them both in your lap.

“Lalli,” you begin. But you don’t know where to go from there.

And anyways, Lalli is ignoring you. He’s already leaning forward again and grabbing a second cake. Which is for himself, apparently. He starts eating without any hesitation.

You look down at the cake in your lap. It’s been a long time since you had fresh strawberries. And you’re in a dream. There will be more strawberries tomorrow night for Emil if that’s what he wants. You pick up your fork and take a bite.

“—and it isn’t _ that _ unusual to keep a nanny on staff, even once your child is a bit older, _ so there,” _ Emil finishes. He sits up straight and turns, looking from you to Lalli. Or rather, looking from your cake to Lalli’s cake. “Ah yes, I did mean to tell you to help yourself. Please take whatever you like, there’s ham, sausages, dumplings, meatballs, fresh bread—” 

He continues listing foods, but you’re content with your cake.

It’s an odd night. Emil slips in and out of lucidity, though Reynir and Lalli seem to take it in stride. You suppose it’s something that you can get used to with time. You’re more bothered by the incorporeal butterflies that drift through the room at odd intervals. Or when a duck spontaneously materializes on the back of the couch. Lalli just shoos it to the floor, so perhaps this has happened before. You prefer the calm and predictability of dreaming in your forest. But this cake isn’t bad at all. 

Lalli makes serious inroads into his own cake before he sets it down on the table. Then he tells you, “Don’t lean back.” Before you can ask him what he means, he slips into the space between you and the back of the couch, curling his legs in tight, wedging himself between Emil, you, and the couch. 

You raise your eyebrows a little, but he can’t see that right now, and you aren’t going to ask him about this out loud in company. Emil doesn’t seem entirely lucid at the moment, but he doesn’t protest, only continues some rambling story about some society event his father sponsored last year. Lalli’s elbow digs into your back as he fidgets and adjusts, but you don’t mind. 

Once he seems settled, you glance back out over your shoulder, to get a look at how he’s arranged himself. But then, through the window, you catch a glimpse of yellow flickering in the distance.

Emil and Reynir both notice you staring. Emil turns to look, and says, “Oh. Yes. Don’t worry, the dream always ends before it reaches the house.” You’re hoping for a little more from him than that, but he slips away from the present again, and you aren’t concerned enough to drag him back. If the fire does get close, you should be able to hold it back for long enough to get everyone out onto the water.

The morning arrives sooner than you would have expected. You wake up tired, but in a different way than the last few days. It’s a tired that doesn’t feel so much like you’ve been wrung empty. It still doesn’t make quarantine pleasant, but it’s… something different. A change to break up the time. You still can’t manage to speak much with the others, but you’re able to keep an eye on them without feeling like you’ve been pushed past your limits. Emil seems cheerfully unaware of what happened last night, though it’s hard to tell with a cell separating you, and the Finnish things he says to you are generally greetings or mangled questions about how you’re doing.

The following nights tend to follow one of three templates. Lalli will spend the night in your forest. Reynir will spend the night in your forest. Of the both of them will drag you off somewhere else to spend the night with them _ and _Emil, whether that’s in Lalli’s forest, Emil’s home, or what you assume must be Icelandic hills, populated by a flock of sheep. You would protest, but then you have a sinking feeling that they’ll bring the gathering to your forest instead. It’s fairly clear that someone—Lalli—has arranged a schedule and imposed it without bothering to ask you, but at this point, you doubt arguing will get you anywhere.

All of your dream lands drift closer and closer together, just by virtue of simple physical proximity. Eventually, you give in and extend your protections to encompass all four of you. It means that any of them can walk into your forest without waiting for permission. But that doesn’t change anything for Reynir, Lalli already knows you won’t lock him out if he comes to you, and Emil would be more vulnerable than any of you if he was caught out on the open water. You ought to be irritated, but you’ve already given up on any pretense of privacy when you’re awake as long as you’re in quarantine. It’s just a minor annoyance to do the same in your dreams. 

And you’re aware that you’re not— You’re not doing as much as you could to help the others pass through the quarantine. Emil and Lalli have conversations with each other, or play games, or just sit together—you’re able to observe enough of them to draw some fairly obvious conclusions about what they are to each other—and Reynir even manages to talk a little with them in broken Finnish and Swedish. But whenever you’re awake in the quarantine cell, you just— And even at night, you aren’t much better. Anyways. It seems fair to let them make demands on your time this way.

It’s all a familiar routine by the time quarantine is drawing to an end. The quarantine experience does not improve with time, and it’s difficult every day to force yourself to eat enough to keep from feeling sick. Lalli isn’t doing much better. Neither of you is talking much, and Lalli is spending more and more time underneath his bed. Even Emil and Reynir are clearly worn down. 

By the last night, you’re restless and impatient. You want to _ leave. _ But you know, you _ know, _that it’s just one last night, then tomorrow morning the workers will begin the process of clearing you to leave, and by afternoon you’ll be back on solid land. It’s a struggle to fall asleep, and then once you’re dreaming, you still pace restlessly in your forest. The best way to make the time pass quickly would be to doze the night away, but you’re wound too tight to sit down. 

When the others wander into your forest, the distraction is almost welcome. You keep an eye on Lalli and Reynir, but they don’t make any move to leave, they sit down with Emil on the rocks beside the water. You don’t manage to participate much in the conversation, but it’s a distraction. It’s something to focus on outside of your own thoughts. You’re aware that you haven’t been able to think—or _ breathe— _ the entire time you’ve been in this quarantine, and you _ need _ it to be over. 

Eventually, Lalli stands up and drifts over to where you’re pacing. He doesn’t say anything at first, just watches. You’re probably giving away more than you mean to, but there’s no helping it. Once you’re on land again. Then you can focus on not worrying him again. 

Quietly, Lalli says, “Tomorrow.”

“Mm.”

He sighs hard and looks off through the trees. You don’t really need to say much more to understand each other.

Though, after a moment, you add, “When we’re out of quarantine, you need to eat more.”

That makes him snort, and he gives you a flat sideways look, but doesn’t respond past that. All he says is, “You should sit down. And _ rest.” _

He isn’t wrong. You don’t want to sit still right now, but he isn’t wrong. You let him lead the way back to the others, where Emil and Reynir are both lying flat on the mossy rocks, though they sit up as you approach. Emil beams at Lalli as he lowers himself down beside him. Half his hair is sticking up, and there are little bits of moss in it. Lalli snorts again, but fondly, and reaches out to straighten it and brush the moss away.

Even when you’re sitting with the others, you don’t say much. The conversation flows well enough around you without you needing to participate. Or listen. It’s mostly excitement for tomorrow. They’re all impatient to be done with quarantine too, and you’re reminded that they did another month of quarantine already this year. 

And they’re restless as well. Emil goes over to the water’s edge with Lalli to look at the fish— which fortunately still _ are _ fish, and haven’t been switched with any birds. After they drift back to you and Reynir, Lalli sits for only a minute before leaving to climb into the low branches of the nearest tree, though he still continues speaking with the others. Reynir’s fylgja wanders off into the underbrush, and Reynir follows, calling it back, though his fylgja doesn’t seem inclined to listen.

Lalli and Reynir are much more subtle than they were the last time. It takes you several minutes to notice that they’ve both disappeared. You only realize after Emil asks several questions that nobody answers, and you start looking for Lalli to see if he’s fallen asleep in a tree again.

He hasn’t. He’s _ left. _And so has Reynir. You don’t wait for Emil to catch on. You stand and offer him a hand to pull him to his feet. “Come on,” you tell him grimly. “I’m taking you home.”

Emil takes your hand easily enough. He says, _ “Thank _ you, I’m sure. My father would be _ very _displeased if I were to be lost in— Where are we again?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

With any luck, he won’t regain his senses until after you deal with this. And _ then _ you’re going to hunt down your cousin. But first, you need to leave Emil somewhere safe that isn’t your forest or Lalli’s. 

Unlike the last time Lalli did this to you, you’ve been to Emil’s dream space enough times that you can find it on your own. You keep hold of his hand and tow him off across the water, though you have to move slowly to be sure that he steps on the stones underneath the surface and doesn’t lose his footing. You have doubts about whether you’d trust him to do this on his own even fully lucid, so you certainly aren’t going to rely on his powers of observation right now, when he seems to be mostly preoccupied with telling you about the vast importance of the Västerström family.

Despite that, it’s a short trip. It isn’t long before you’re hauling Emil through the open door and into the familiar carpeted hallway. After several visits here, you’re getting better at ignoring the disorientation of the water above you and the water’s surface simultaneously beside you. You just need to be sure Emil won’t wander straight out again. If you can get him to the dinner in the next room over, you think that will be enough, but he’s slowing down with every step, and when you glance back, he’s looking around with a confused expression.

Slowly, he says, “This… is a dream?”

You aren’t going to snap at him. None of this is his fault. So you just say, “Yes.”

“Oh.”

You’re getting impatient and wondering if you can drag him over to the other room yet. But before you reach a tipping point, he moves forward. _ Finally. _You move onward as well—all you need to do is be sure he’s settled, and then you can go about hunting down Lalli—but Emil cuts you off. He’s turned towards you, looking up at your face. One of his hands is on your shoulder, his other hand comes to rest on your neck, and you’re still trying to understand what’s happening when he tugs you down a little further and— kisses you.

At first, you’re too shocked to know how to respond. You’re too frozen to push him away. It’s not a demanding kiss, long, but soft, and you feel him snake his arms around your neck as it lasts. When he finally pulls back enough to break the kiss, you’re still just as confused and frozen as you were at first. Distantly, you realize Emil’s face is flushed, and he’s not quite looking at you. 

“If you don’t mind?” he says, belatedly.

You still barely understand what’s happening. You— understand _ what _has happened, but you don’t know why or how or— Your mind is spiraling too rapidly for you to catch and hold any single thought, and all you can think to say at first is, “Lalli.”

Emil glances around, and makes no move to release you. “He’s not here, right? He said—”

His voice trails off. You can see him looking at your mouth. He leans in and kisses you again, still as soft and lingering as the first one. You still have no idea what to say. You try to focus on Emil’s expression when he pulls back this time. His eyes don’t look entirely focused. Maybe he’s less lucid than you thought. _Still_ less lucid— He was lost in the dream when you pulled him into the house, and you’re not sure that he ever came back to himself.

He says, “Onni?”

You still haven’t answered him. He knows who you are. His arms are still around your neck. There’s only one way you can make any sense of this, so you tell him, firmly, “You’re dreaming.”

Emil blinks once, then smiles. “Good, I thought so. And— Can I...?”

His eyes are on your mouth, and he’s ever so slightly pulling you forward. You aren’t separated by much, and you’re still so, so confused, and it doesn’t take much surrender to let him pull you across that last little distance. And then he’s kissing you again. 

Emil won’t remember this. It will be just like a true dream to him, just the vague, hazy shape of an idea, if he remembers it at all. You hope. As far as you’re aware, he hasn’t remembered the other nights. Though you don’t _ know _ that, you don’t _ know _ anything about this, and your heart starts to pound just from thinking about how much uncertainty there is in every part of this. Your hands have settled on Emil’s waist, and you don’t know when that happened.

You need to stop. The first surprise of this is over, and you need to pull away. Lalli left you alone with Emil and _ this _ is what you do? If you needed to make it any more clear to yourself how thoroughly you’ve betrayed his trust— Emil won’t remember this, you hope, but you have no excuse for your own actions. Every second you allow this to continue is another betrayal. You don’t know why you haven’t pushed Emil away yet, but your mind can’t make the connection, somehow. This needs to end. You need to end this. You need to— 

It’s unforgivable. You know why Emil wouldn’t understand what’s happening. You have no excuse, _ no _excuse. It’s so easy to let yourself be held in place, as if you couldn’t break free just by standing up straight. He would let you go. All you have to do is let go of him. All you have to do is stand and walk away. Instead, you find your back against a wall, with Emil against you, a warm weight pinning you in place, his hands on your shoulders.

He breaks the kiss, and this is when you need to tell him you won’t let him do this to Lalli. But your throat is closed and the words won’t come. He doesn’t pull away far enough for you to see his face, or far enough for you convince yourself to finish breaking away. You can hear him breathing fast. _ You’re _breathing fast, you realize, with a sickening twist of guilt. Emil kisses your cheek once, then your mouth again. He’s still pressed against you, and you don’t push him away.

You hear him swallow, and his voice is hoarse when he says, “Do you—?”

He doesn’t finish asking the question before you’re kissing again, and this time his mouth opens against yours. Before you can remember yourself, you mirror him. 

You don’t know why you can’t _ stop. _ You don’t know why you can’t find your words, but even without that— You could tell him no in any number of other ways, you could push him away, you could _ fly _ away, you could force yourself awake right now, you— He thinks this is a dream, you _ told _ him this was a dream. But there’s something about having a person here, against you, warm and heavy. It’s no excuse, especially when this all comes at Lalli’s expense. But you still find your arms slipping around Emil, holding him closer, letting your fingers dig into the fabric of his clothing.

But that’s when— He shifts as you hold him, leaning further into you. Your legs slot together. And you _ feel _him hard against you, through his pants. He shifts, and you can still feel him, pressed against your hip. And you’re responding, you realize with a surge of horror. Your body is— No matter how inexcusable this was before, it’s worse now.

Emil has noticed— something. He pulls away, looking up into your face. He touches the side of your neck, and says, “Onni? What’s wrong?”

You can’t answer him. You wrench yourself awake, and open your eyes, staring at the ceiling of the quarantine room. You squeeze your eyes shut again, but that only serves to turn your attention inward. You’re appalled to realize that your body, here— You can feel your face is flushed, you’re still breathing hard, and— 

From two cells over, you hear Emil whisper, “Onni?”

You don’t say a word. You don’t move. You stay perfectly motionless, forcing your breathing to stay slow and steady. As far as he knows, that was only a dream. Only a regular, normal dream. You’re not going to do anything to dispel that illusion. After a few minutes, you hear the creak of his bed as he moves, and then the sound of his bathroom door.

You take the opportunity to turn over and bury your face in your pillow. Your eyes are already starting to burn and you don’t think you could sleep, even if you tried. But you’re not going to risk running into any of the others again tonight. And you manage to stay fairly quiet, all things considered, though you absolutely don’t lift your head and look around to see if any of the others are also awake. You don’t move at all until it’s morning, and even with your pillow, you can see the lights being brightened and hear the others up and about.

There’s almost nothing of the quarantine left at that point. Which is good, because even this much is almost more than you can bear. You can’t manage to speak at all to the others. Or look at them. You don’t even notice the last few hours passing, you just sit on the edge of your bed with your thoughts racing in frantic, useless circles. You made a mistake. No, that’s understating it. You’re unforgivably out of line. You have no idea how to make this right. 

All you can think of is that you ought to… leave. That’s wrong. That’s the coward’s way out. You _ should _ tell Lalli what you’ve done and let him tell you to go away himself. But how are you supposed to do that? You can’t explain this. You can tell him what you’ve done, but you can’t tell him why. You can list out the reasons why you left him behind before, the reasons you had for lying to him, but with _ this, _you can’t tell him what you were thinking or why you didn’t stop yourself. 

You can hear the others worrying over you, but can’t bring yourself to respond. Lalli has finally pulled himself out from under his bed and is pacing his cell impatiently, waiting for the quarantine workers to come and let you out. You can hear Emil trying to ask questions in broken Finnish and Lalli is impatient enough to tell him that it’s probably just the quarantine, that Onni is sometimes _ like this, _that he’ll be fine once you all get out. He’s leaving spaces between sentences that are shaped for you to agree or disagree, but your throat is closed too tightly to speak.

You’re dreading the moment Emil tells Lalli what happened before you can. Lalli will expect answers you can’t give him, and you don’t know what you’ll do. Every time Emil says a word, you have to stop yourself from flinching, but it just— never comes up. He doesn’t say anything about last night. He asks Lalli if he knows when the quarantine workers will come, asks you if you’re okay, complains across both of you at Reynir, in Swedish that nobody but perhaps Lalli can understand. He eventually resorts to muttering to himself in his cell, and he still hasn’t said a word about— about anything. 

It’s so, so tempting to believe he’s forgotten it. He’s not a mage, his dreams are different from yours. You’ve seen the way he bends the shape of other dreams around his, and the way it’s so easy for his mind to slip away from lucidity. ‘This is a dream.’ That’s what he said before he kissed you. You _ want _to believe he never knew it was real. You want him to remember it as a hazy figment of imagination, or to not remember it at all. Unless he says something— But if he remembers, why wouldn’t he have said already? He must not remember. And you can’t ask him. You can’t.


	3. Chapter 3

You walk through your final medical check and the decontamination shower in a daze. It makes last night seem unreal. Like you were the one who dreamed it. But you know that’s only a cheap, cowardly excuse. The last two weeks, the last _ month, _it all seems unreal, and none of that justifies what you just did.

You ought to be relieved that the quarantine is finally, finally over, but you can’t focus on that with— with Emil, Lalli, all of _ this _ hanging over your head. You watch them as closely as you can. But you try to keep your distance. If you talked to Emil a little, you might be able to tell whether he remembers anything of the dream. Except you _ aren’t _ going to talk to him, you’re going to give him and Lalli as much space as you can. You don’t think they’ve explicitly defined things between them—or if they have, Lalli hasn’t said a word about it to you—but even given the most casual observation, it’s obvious that you’re… intruding.

Keeping your distance works for all of an hour, and then it’s a lost cause, because Lalli starts shadowing you, hovering closer and closer as you approach freedom. By the time you’re on the small boat to carry you from the quarantine ship to the shore, he’s never further than an arm’s length away. And Emil follows Lalli. And Reynir follows all of you. You _ don’t _miss the quarantine, not at all. But there’s something to be said for having a space that nobody can physically wander into.

That, along with everything else weighing on your mind— It’s all distracting enough that you nearly reach land before you realize you’ve completely failed to make plans for your arrival. You have enough money for lodging and food, but you also need to deal with the three trunks you brought from Keuruu, and they’re too large and heavy for your group to carry without assistance. Especially when you have no idea where you’re going.

You turn to Lalli, “When we get to the port, I need you to stay with our things. I’ll find a place for us to stay, then come back for you.”

He blinks at you. “Why? We already have everything set up.”

“What?”

His eyebrows pull together. “You were there when I told Reynir to get things arranged.” You look blankly at him and he frowns harder. “In my dream space. You were _ there.” _

You suppose you might have been. Already, you can tell there are large parts of the last month that are… more hazy than they should be.

But worrying about that right now will do you no good. You turn to Reynir, and in Icelandic, you say, “Your plans?”

“Yes!” He grins at you. “It’s mostly like the last time we arrived. My parents should be meeting us again, but now I asked ahead of time if you could stay with us. Oh, and he told me about your luggage, but there are employees at the port who should be taking those to the carriage station for us. But then after that Lalli wanted me to ask if there was someplace _ else _ you might be able to stay in Brúardalur, since you’re probably going to be there for a few months. And that was kind of last minute, so I didn’t get a letter back before we left quarantine, but I’m _ pretty _ sure they would have gotten the message before they left to meet us here and I know there are empty houses in town—” 

You let him talk, and make agreeable noises where they’re called for. You… were not as good a neighbor as you might have been, in quarantine. And perhaps you could make excuses for that behavior, but at least you can be polite now.

While Reynir chatters, you keep an eye on Emil and Lalli. They still seem perfectly at ease with each other, and the knot in your chest loosens a little. You can’t justify what you let happen—what you _ did— _but if you haven’t damaged what they share, that’s the best outcome you could hope for. Emil must not remember it, or only remember it as a dream. You don’t know him well, but you don’t think he’d be able to mislead Lalli that deliberately.

Arriving in Iceland is easier than it was last time. Not easy, but easier. The grief is an association you aren’t sure you’ll ever shake, though now it’s a dull ache instead of an open wound. You aren’t waiting to see Lalli for the first time in months, he’s here, with you, a constant presence behind your shoulder. Your memories of the city from before are indistinct, more of a memory of numbness than a memory of the experience. It helps push the grief a little further away. When Lalli edges around your arm and steals sideways looks at your face, you don’t think he sees anything wrong.

Unfortunately, this time you’re in less of a position to escape the… social niceties. You might have hoped Lalli would take the lead in greeting Reynir’s family, except you know Lalli too well for that. And you’re the only one outside Reynir’s family who speaks Icelandic. His mother alternates between thanking you for bringing her son back, again, and scolding Reynir for leaving again. His father and sister are more reserved. You accept an invitation to lunch, but plead exhaustion as an excuse to avoid spending the afternoon seeing the sights in the city. 

At least during lunch, Reynir’s family carries the bulk of the conversation, and you can simply sit and eat and let the noise pass over and around you. You keep an eye on Lalli, but he seems unconcerned. He doesn’t say much, though you see him lightly kick Emil under the table. Emil’s response is to grin and kicks him back, so you don’t worry about it. You still can’t see anything that looks off in either of them.

After the meal is done, the group divides. You watch Reynir and his family walk off down the road, then you assume you’ll just wait at the carriage station until the evening. But before you can go anywhere, there’s a sharp tug on your sleeve.

When you look around, Lalli is frowning at you. He says, “You’re going to come to the shops with _ us.” _

You aren’t particularly interested, but it’s too difficult to argue. You trail along with him and Emil and make simple one-word answers when either of them addresses something to you. They drift from store to store without making any purchases. The only exception is the bakery, where Lalli walks in and begins pointing out pastry after pastry until he finally marches back out with a large paper bag filled entirely with sweets. He selects one for himself, holds the bag out for Emil, and then holds it in front of you, unmoving, until you finally surrender and take one as well. He passes the bag around again every so often as the day continues, although it’s still half-full when the three of you make your way to the carriage station.

The trip to Reynir’s village begins like the last one did. Lalli slips inside the carriage ahead of everyone else and immediately establishes himself next to a window. Like before, you place yourself beside him, a wall between him and the rest of the cab. Only when Emil climbs up into the carriage, Lalli curls up tighter in his seat and beckons Emil forward into the space between the two of you. Emil hesitates, looking between you, until Lalli grabs his sleeve and yanks him down beside him. You don’t mind, exactly, but you are surprised, and it takes you a moment to adjust. You inch sideways to make space and save Lalli’s bag of pastries before Emil can sit on it. 

The quarters are still more cramped than you prefer, and you’d been preparing to spend the trip with Lalli as a quiet, undemanding presence on one side, but this— it’s still fine. It doesn’t matter to you, as long as Lalli is happy. And Lalli seems perfectly satisfied with how he’s arranged things. 

Reynir’s mother and sister are still having a loud, animated conversation with him and around him as they board, and don’t pay much attention to your side of the carriage. Emil and Lalli talk at first, but it isn’t long until they both doze off, leaning into each other, with their heads resting together. Emil sits normally, slumped over, but with his legs still stretched out straight alongside yours. Lalli has curled up in his seat in such a way that he’s halfway into Emil’s lap. If you unfocus your attention, you can feel them slipping into a shared dream together. You already have Lalli’s pastries, but you also reach past him to take his rifle before it can fall over. You tuck the gun and paper bag more securely into your arms, and settle down in your seat to wait out the night.

You don’t get any rest. You keep your eyes on the landscape, watching it drift by. The sky is clear and the moon is full, and there are too many times when the shape of a tree or the shadow of a rock makes your heart lurch with a moment of fear, but you don’t otherwise bother reacting. You know, intellectually, that there isn’t anywhere in the world where it’s safer to travel. You can _ hear _how quiet it is, especially as you get further away from the shore. But that isn’t as comforting as it should be. It doesn’t feel safe. It feels like there’s something out there hiding from you.

The temperature drops as time passes, and when you look at Emil and Lalli again, they’ve curled further into each other and Lalli’s arms are crossed tight across his stomach, with his hands tucked into his armpits. You shrug out of your cloak and drape it across them both.

As soon as you do, Lalli opens one eye to look at you. You should have expected that.

After a moment, he says, “Are you going to sleep?”

“Probably not.” You can lock Lalli out of your dreams if you need to— although you can’t convince yourself you would. But even if things seem to be… fine, passing the night together is more than you can handle right now. You look out the window, because it’s better than looking in the carriage. 

From the corner of your eye, you see Lalli shift, but he only moves enough to tuck in your cloak tighter around himself. He’s still watching you. He says, “Are you going to cry?”

“No.”

He doesn’t push any harder after that. You think he dozes off again, but you don’t turn to look more closely.

As long as the night drags, it has to end eventually. The sun is beginning to rise when the carriage crests a rolling hill and you see the town spread out below you. There’s some mild chaos as the carriage comes to a stop and unloads its passengers and the trunks you brought from Keuruu. The large, heavy trunks. You’re looking at them, belatedly realizing that you’d failed to consider the distance between the carriage stop and the town itself, when Emil sidles up beside you and places your cloak back across your shoulders.

Fortunately, while you’re still adjusting your cloak and fixing the hood, Lalli slips up on your other side. He looks from the trunks to your face and says, “Stop worrying about nothing. I already made Reynir sort it out.”

He did. You’re able to watch a horse and cart make their way up to you from the town, a trip that takes long enough to make you even more grateful you didn’t have to navigate it while carrying the trunks on foot. You should have remembered this from the last time. 

You do make your apologies to Reynir’s parents for the inconvenience, though they just wave you off and say it isn’t any problem at all. Reynir’s father says that you’ve helped bring back his son from the silent world for a _ second _time, and this is the least they can do. Reynir makes faces behind his parents’ backs as they apologize for him, and you can see his sister observing the proceedings with open amusement.

After you’ve helped load the carts, you follow them down to the town on foot. Lalli decides to walk as well. And so does Reynir. He chats as you go, though apparently without much expectation of a reply. Which is fortunate, because Lalli ignores him completely, and you’re tired enough that conversation has no appeal. 

You do manage to catch it when Reynir points out the house you’ll be living in. “It’s small,” he says, “and a little old. But it’s nice! My cousin’s family outgrew the place, but they’d been wanting to move towards the coast anyways and _ then _ she was expecting another baby—” 

There’s… a lot. You absorb enough to understand that his parents have charge of the house and that the home is still largely furnished, including three beds. Reynir also passes along a number of additional offers from his parents, of meals, of more furniture, of any basics you might need— You lose track after only a few minutes. At least he doesn’t need much from you. Vague, noncommittal noises seem to keep him satisfied. 

Establishing yourself in the house goes quickly. All you have are your trunks and the small packs Emil and Lalli are carrying. You’re able to plead exhaustion, again, to fend off an invitation to dinner, and then Reynir’s family makes an exit. You’ll have to accept an invitation eventually, just— Not today. Now that you’re out of quarantine and not trapped in an overcrowded carriage, it’s tempting to lie down and sleep right here on the floor, but you need to hold off for just a little while longer.

The house is small, as promised, so there shouldn’t be much to do. The building is half-buried in the turf, so you’re expecting it to be dim. But when Emil experimentally flips a switch beside the front door, the house has working electric lights. There’s nothing remarkable about the main room. The cabinets have no food, but there are still pots, pans, and dishes. The stove appears to be electric, and to your surprise, it even seems to work. Very different from Finland.

Emil is exploring much more loudly and enthusiastically than you, with Lalli content to trail along behind him. While he’s commenting on what you assume must be the furnishings, you go to look at the bedrooms. There are three, each with a bed of their own, along with assorted side tables and cabinets. You’d almost expected three bare mattresses in a single common room. It isn’t a problem, you just— keep waiting for something to go wrong. 

You try to focus on other things. When you look over the bedrooms, you notice that one of the mattresses is particularly thin and flat, resting on wooden slats, with a bed frame built tall enough for a person to fit comfortably underneath.

“Lalli.”

He slips through the doorway moments later, and takes your meaning easily enough. You’re watching him closely for his reaction, and all you read in him is satisfaction. He doesn’t say anything, just drops his pack onto the bed. Emil makes it through the door just as Lalli is heading back out, and Lalli catches him by the wrist and pulls him around and along down the hall. You leave the room just in time to see Lalli installing Emil in the next bedroom over.

That leaves you with the final bedroom, and the largest, which you feel like you should protest. But Lalli and Emil are already off again, looking through the rest of the house. You suppose that you can keep the trunks in your room, for now. Then at least they’ll be out of the way. The room looks comfortable enough. There are no sheets on the beds, but that’s a minor problem. Failing all else, you know you have warm clothing and blankets in your trunks.

When you go to find the others, you find Emil in raptures over… something. He’s speaking in Swedish, so you don’t even bother trying to understand.

“There’s a shower,” Lalli says. “And a bath.” He glances back over his shoulder at Emil. “He might be a little happy about it.”

_ “Hot. Water,” _ Emil says, beaming at both of you. And then he’s off again in Swedish.

He doesn’t stop talking, apparently still about the shower, but at least he helps you carry the trunks to your room. They’re a bit heavy for you to lift by yourself. After those are in place, you sit down on the bed to think about where to begin. You need to buy food at some point, but there are other things to be done too, and you ought to lay out a plan for the day, you just need a moment to collect your thoughts.

You don’t actually intend to sleep, but it happens. You sleep so deeply you don’t have anything more than a blurry memory of dozing in your forest, and when you wake up, there’s much less light coming through your bedroom window. You sigh, but it isn’t a disaster. One day without everything you need won’t be terrible. You might have noticed and woken sooner, but someone shut your door.

When you wander out into the main room, you smell food. Emil is standing over the stove, cooking— some kind of stew. Lalli’s near enough to see what he’s been doing and doesn’t look alarmed, so it’s… probably fine. 

And Reynir is back. His face lights up when he catches sight of you and you suppress a wince. He turns to pick up something from the table behind him and brandishes it in your direction. “Sheets!”

Your face is blank, and it takes a moment for Reynir to realize he needs to elaborate.

“So, my mother was talking about the house and everything and she felt _ really _ bad that she hadn’t had the chance to set things up or thought to send me or Guðrún to the market to get some basics once you arrived. And she was trying to remember what got taken on the move and what got left behind, and she was pretty sure all the linens were gone, but since there aren’t guests at our house anymore—” He lifts the stack of cloth again and grins. “Sheets! And towels. Also a few pillows, those are over on the couch, but mom says to tell her if you need more.”

It’s a lot to wake up to. You say enough to be polite and ensure that Reynir will pass along your thanks to his parents. And then you take the first possible opportunity to leave the room again. It isn’t a perfect solution. You aren’t surprised when Reynir follows you a few minutes later. He’s there to leave sheets for your bed, but he lingers past that, chatting about the cousin who used to live here, her husband, her children, the neighbors, the town— At least you can get some work done, even with him here. After so long, you don’t remember what was packed in which trunk, but you pick one at random and lift the lid.

Yarn. Not that much, just a few skeins, but you have to move them out of the way before you can get at the rest of the trunk. You’d forgotten those were in here. It isn’t enough to do anything large, and you don’t have any projects in mind. But it could be worth using once the weather turns cold again.

And you’ve caught Reynir’s attention. Whatever story he was telling you cuts off in the middle, and he says, “Oh! I hadn’t realized— You knit? Or maybe not, I guess you could spin instead—” 

You sigh. “Both.”

“That’s great! Do you have a spinning wheel in here somewhere? Or do you use something else?”

“No. I don’t have mine anymore.” You gave away your spinning wheel before you left Keuruu. You didn’t have a way to store it that you trusted to keep it intact. That’s something of a relief at this point, because you have a sinking feeling that this conversation is headed towards an invitation to work in company, and you don’t know how many excuses you have to politely refuse.

“Oh.” Reynir pauses for a moment. “Do you want one?”

“What?”

“Well, mom never has time these days, and dad’s back gives him too much trouble. Guðrún’s not interested, and apparently there’s _ loads _ of farm magic they want me to take care of before winter.” He makes a face, but doesn’t look too unhappy. “Anyways, it annoys my mom to see it sitting around not getting used, so. Do you want it?”

You wait, but he’s just watching you expectantly. “I can’t accept something like that.”

He just grins. “Not to keep, but for now? _ Someone _might as well get some use out of it.”

“I don’t have anything to spin.”

That makes him laugh. “I can help with that too! I _ might _ know where to find a couple sheep around here. What do you like working with best? We’ve got _ piles _of roving, or there are rolags I helped with last summer that nobody has used, or we could even do raw wool if you like. I can give you whatever you want.” He pauses at the look on your face, then tries again. “Or I can… sell you whatever you want?”

You give up. You close your eyes and sigh. “Fine.”

You aren’t up to thinking through the particulars right now. There are too many options and details and Reynir is so enthusiastic and helpful that it makes you feel worn even thinner than you already are. He promises variety and names a price that you’re almost positive is too low, but you can’t fight him on this right now.

After it’s all settled, he sits on the edge of your bed, humming happily to himself. You turn back to your unpacking, just for the sake of having something to do. You set your yarn on top of a cabinet, along with a bundle of your knitting needles, since it seems you may have a use for them.

Beneath that—

In an instant, your chest locks tight, and you have to blink hard a few times before you feel even slightly in control of yourself. You should have expected this. Maybe you just didn’t want to think about it. But you weren’t ready. You can’t look away from Tuuri’s shirt sitting at the top of the trunk, and you know the rest of her clothing is folded and stacked underneath it, and that other things of hers are packed away in here, and you want to close the trunk and never open it again.

Reynir notices something is off. You hear him stand and walk up behind you, but can’t force yourself to move.

He looks over your shoulder. “Oh,” he says. “Is that—?” 

“Yes,” you say, shortly. It’s all you can manage. You don’t trust your voice any further than that. You reach up and shut the trunk. The lid is too loud as it closes, but you feel like you’re hearing it from a distance.

Behind you, Reynir clears his throat. “Onni, there’s—” 

_ “Don’t.” _

“Sorry! I’m not, I just—” You hear the rustle of cloth, and then he holds out something over your shoulder. “This was in her things. In Denmark, I mean. And I didn’t want to leave it behind. I’ve been meaning to give it back to you, but I didn’t know what the right time would be.”

You take it without looking. You’re numb all over, and it’s difficult to think or focus, so you have to unfold the heavy paper several times before you realize you’re holding a photograph. Of your family. Your eyes burn so hard you have to squeeze them tight shut, and it’s almost impossible to breathe. You don’t think you’d be able to speak if you tried.

“I’m sorry,” Reynir says. “I can go now.”

He shuts the door quietly behind him. It’s a few minutes before you feel in control of yourself again, and longer than that before you’re willing to rejoin the others. 

The rest of the day is a quiet affair. Lalli and Emil might have slept on the carriage, but it wasn’t a restful journey. Emil makes use of the bathtub and sings its praises in very enthusiastic, very broken Finnish before dozing off lying on the couch. Lalli curls up in an armchair and sleeps too. You have to wake them both to eventually send them to real beds for the night. You struggle at first to fall asleep, in a strange house and a strange country. But you manage, and are still so tired you sleep within your dreams as well.

The spinning wheel is delivered at a painfully early hour. Along with bags full of altogether too many varieties of wool. They both come accompanied by an overwhelming amount of enthusiastic conversation.

Thankfully, when Lalli leaves the house, towing Emil behind him, he catches Reynir up in his wake as well, and you’re left in quiet solitude. Though it does force you to realize that you have no idea what to do with yourself. That just wasn’t…. something you’d been considering. You knew you’d been avoiding picturing any sort of future, but you’re only just now realizing that includes things as small and frivolous as making plans for what to do tomorrow, or the day after. The number of things you could do to arrange the house is— overwhelming. And you’re not ready to open the trunks again. But complete idleness sounds unbearable, so for lack of any better options, you sit down with the spinning wheel.

It’s shorter than what you’re used to, and the wooden chairs in the kitchen are a little tall to work well. But the couch sits low enough to be comfortable. You’re close to one of the few windows, but there are electric lights as well. There’s even a small table next to the end of the couch. You have all the wool that Reynir brought you right at hand, and you do initially try to sort through it all, until the sheer selection becomes too much and you just select a bag of undyed medium-wool roving. Even then, it still takes some time to actually make yourself _ begin. _

Your first efforts are… lacking. You’re out of practice. And adjusting to a new spinning wheel. For a while, any relaxation you might find in the activity is outweighed by the frustration of being unable to do it well. But what else would you do? Stare out the window all day? You have the beginnings of a headache by the time you’re spinning yarn that might be worth using. But by then, you feel confident enough to sort through the other things Reynir brought you, select some rolags of dark green wool, and begin spinning that instead.

Lalli and Emil return in the early afternoon, carrying food. You’d been meaning to go out and do something useful, at some point. Soon. You’re painfully aware of how little you’ve accomplished all day, and guilt sinks in as Emil and Lalli look at everything spread out around you. Your hands are full of wool, and you freeze, unsure whether to push it all aside right away or to finish the rolag you’re spinning and put it all away in an orderly manner.

Before you come to a decision, Lalli drops his food on the kitchen table and wanders over to you. Or, he drops most of his food on the table. He _ also _has a bag of fresh bread, which he drops into your lap. It’s still warm, so you can’t resist taking one roll and beginning to eat it. Lalli pokes through the wool you’ve unpacked and spread out on the rest of the couch and the table beside you, then starts to rummage through everything else you haven’t laid out yet. You suppose he couldn’t understand everything Reynir listed off to you this morning when he left it here. And he doesn’t look annoyed, or bothered, just idly interested in everything you have laid out around you. 

Emil asks Lalli something in Swedish from the kitchen, but Lalli doesn’t look around, just gives him a one-word answer and continues poking through the wool. You see Emil shrug and go back to putting away dried goods in the cabinets. Neither of them seems uneasy, and you can’t see any new tension between them. You— If Emil remembered what happened in quarantine, you would have expected him to tell Lalli before now. This is just further confirmation that it’s entirely your responsibility. But you’re a coward. If your silence preserves what they have, then you’ll take that onto yourself.

You need to pull yourself from that train of thought. Lalli isn’t finished feeling the wool, and you need something to do with your yarn after you spin it. You ask him, “Do you want me to make you a sweater?”

He makes a noncommittal noise and continues rummaging. But you don’t really expect him to _ ask _ for something. When you have more yarn spun, you’ll set it out for him and see which ones he likes best. After a moment, he quietly says, “Emil likes soft things.”

You blink. You glance up at Emil, but you don’t think he heard. Just as quietly, you say, “Do you want me to make something for you to give him?”

Lalli doesn’t answer, just sighs hard, rolls his eyes, and tells you, “Eat more bread. It’s fresh.” You aren’t certain what else it is that he’s trying to say, but it doesn’t matter. You can make him a gift to give to Emil. You’ll work on that once you’ve made enough yarn to choose a project. There are several pattern books packed somewhere in your trunks, and— Eventually, you’ll have to unpack them. And then you’ll have Lalli choose something for Emil.

Even better, later that evening, Lalli goes into the back of the house and comes back to the main room wearing a blanket that you know was packed away in one of the trunks. Perhaps if you wait long enough, Lalli will dig out the pattern books and choose a project himself. You won’t depend on that, but it’s definitely a possibility, and you’re glad for any excuse to put off going into the trunks yourself.

The next morning, after breakfast, Lalli gets ready to leave. Emil starts to stand to follow him, but Lalli plants a hand in the middle of his forehead and firmly pushes him back down into his seat. Emil looks surprised, but not unhappy. Lalli looks between you and Emil. Then he drops a book on the table in front of Emil and says, “I’ll be back later.”

He slips out the door before you can reply. Or argue. You have no idea what to say to Emil, and for a moment, you just eye him warily. He’s leafing through the book. Then he looks up at you, smiles crookedly, and says, “More Finnish lessons.”

Once you’ve cleaned up breakfast, you go to your spinning wheel again. You’re tense, waiting for— _ something. _But Emil doesn’t say much of anything to you, just settles into a chair with the book, and starts to read. 

For a little while, things are quiet, and you begin to relax. You’re successfully spinning thinner yarn than you were yesterday, and seeing it coming out _ correctly _ gives you a quiet glow of satisfaction. Then Emil sighs hard and stands up and all the tension comes snapping back into you in a moment.

He crosses the room, holding out the book with a sheepish smile, saying, “Sorry, sorry. These words— are unusual?”

It’s not just a question of translation— The passage in question revolves around a _ pun. _ It takes considerable time to explain every possible meaning of ‘kuusi palaa’ to him, especially when he doesn’t know most of the meanings of the two words to begin with. Even then, you’re not certain he understands when you’re trying to describe a spruce tree to him, when you don’t know the Swedish word and he has no context for what the Finnish word means.

By the time you’re done, he’s grimacing and rubbing his forehead with his eyes scrunched tight shut. Still, he laughs and says, “This… I blame Lalli.”

“That’s fair.”

He grins at you, then lets himself drop heavily onto the opposite side of the couch. He sighs, but he’s still smiling when he picks up the book and goes back to reading.

It takes a while for you to find the rhythm of your spinning again. It doesn’t help when you see that Emil watching you. He sees it when you notice him and says, “Sorry! Only— very interesting.”

You do your best to ignore the scrutiny and focus on your work. You adjust, but it’s still nice when Lalli arrives home again and Emil’s attention is pulled away. “You!” he declares, pointing dramatically. “You _ ran away.” _

Lalli looks at him and raises his eyebrows. “It’s been weeks since I had any time by myself. You can go run away too if you want.”

Emil switches to Swedish and mutters to himself, but he still gets up and goes to help Lalli chop vegetables for dinner. After that work is done and Emil is watching over a pot of soup on the stove, Lalli takes his place on the couch. He watches you work for a few minutes without speaking, but you’re used to Lalli watching you, and it’s a comfortable silence.

Though— You’ve done very little to help arrange your living situation here, but you know something you _ can _ do. You keep spinning, but address him. “Lalli. How much rent do I owe to Reynir’s parents?” You might need to find some local work so you have some money left by the time you leave, but at least Iceland understands the value of mage work more than Sweden does.

Lalli doesn’t answer you at first, and when you glance over at him, he’s just looking at you blankly. _ “You’re _not paying rent,” he says.

You frown at him. “We aren’t going to live here for free. We need to pay Reynir’s family for lodging.”

He snorts. _ “Obviously. _ But that’s not your job. Emil and I just got paid. We’re taking care of it.” He pauses for a moment, studying you. “That was the plan from the beginning.”

Ah. You think you might understand. “The arrangements you made during—” 

“Quarantine? Yes.” He doesn’t tell you again that you were there, but it hangs in the air between you. 

“Mmh.” You look back at the spinning wheel. You don’t want to talk about the things you don’t remember. “Did you tell Emil the plans during the day?”

“What? No, we took care of it at night, since he was there anyways. And that way he couldn’t make things confusing by being bad at Finnish.”

You blink and glance at Lalli. “He’s not lucid in his dreams.”

“Not completely, but still.” Lalli shrugs. “If you can get him to focus on you, he’s usually okay. And anyways, I checked with him afterwards to be sure he remembered. I’m not stupid.”

Your blood runs cold. You think you mostly keep your reaction off your face, but Lalli knows you too well, and you’re painfully exposed. You keep your eyes locked on your hands and force yourself to begin spinning again. You can feel Lalli’s eyes on you, but you _ have _to keep yourself steady now, or you’ll ruin your work. It doesn’t mean Emil remembered— No, you can’t think about that right now, not with the others here. You focus as hard as you can on your spinning, and you don’t know if you convince Lalli that nothing is wrong, but after a few minutes he stands and drifts across the room to join Emil at the stove.

You intend to spend that night alone, thinking, but Reynir is waiting for you when you fall asleep. “Onni! Hi! I meant to come over earlier to see how you all were doing, but then I was out with the sheep _ forever, _and by the time I got back in I thought this would just be easier—” 

So you don’t get much time to sit on your own and think. But you think through… enough. Lalli didn’t say that Emil _ always _ remembered. And there’s everything you’ve observed since. There’s an anxious knot deep in your stomach that still won’t ease, but you don’t think Emil is lying to Lalli. Or that he could lie to Lalli. _ You’re _still the only one who’s misleading him.

You’re distracted enough that you accept an invitation to Reynir’s home the following night for dinner. You wince, but there’s no taking it back now. It isn’t as though you have many demands on your time here. You haven’t accomplished anything since you arrived, you’ve only sat for hours in front of a spinning wheel and watched other people do useful things.

At least when you tell Lalli and Emil about dinner the following morning, they don't seem to mind. They talk back and forth about the things Reynir’s parents cooked when they were here before, and say enough to make you hope they’ll have a pleasant evening. They lived here for more than a month. You’re sure they’re more familiar with what’s coming than you are.

And dinner isn’t a bad experience. The house is quieter than it was last time. There isn’t the… exuberance from Taru and the others who organized the expedition. And it’s less unbearable now for you to exist in company. You’re still the only one in your group who speaks Icelandic, but Reynir’s sister knows enough Swedish to chat with Emil, and you mostly speak to Reynir’s father, who wants to know how you like the spinning wheel and what you think of the different wools you’ve been spinning. It’s… undemanding. Simple questions with simple answers. And when you’ve been stuffed full of food and sent back to your house, you have to privately admit that it feels good to stretch your legs.

You aren’t certain whether that evening was planned by Lalli or his friends, but later excursions definitely are. It falls into a rough pattern of one day when you’re allowed to sit at home—sometimes alone, sometimes in company—and one day when you’re pulled out into the town for one reason or another. Maybe it’s Lalli insisting you need to climb one of the steep hills outside of town to see the view, or maybe it’s Emil asking you to come with him to the market to help him carry the food home. You can tell what they’re doing, and you’re tempted to argue or push back or— something. But you don’t have any excuse to refuse when they try to bring you somewhere. You stay home when you’re left to your own devices, but it isn’t as though you have anything important to occupy your time, and it’s easy to surrender and let them steer you. 

Lalli spends time out of the house nearly every single day, sometimes with Emil and sometimes without. When you ask them where they’ve been, they might tell you ‘exploring’, but other times Lalli might just shrug and tell you, ‘places.’ It isn’t that surprising to you that Lalli would be restless, after so many years of the scouting routine. But you try to keep an eye on him. You want to be sure he isn’t feeling unhappy or dissatisfied without the demands of a job to keep him occupied. 

Sometimes Lalli very firmly tells Emil to _ stay _ when he goes out. It doesn’t follow a pattern you can recognize. But you get used to spending quiet days in the house with Emil, where he reads or dozes on the couch. And you’re grateful to have him around when the town children decide they haven’t seen enough of you and descend on the house one morning. Emil answers a knock at the door, and then has to hold back a pack of children who are craning past him for a better look at you. It’s enough of a surprise that you freeze and don’t manage to react at all, so it’s up to Emil to control them.

Emil still doesn’t have much Icelandic, so he’s just speaking Swedish—very loudly—so you don’t know what he’s saying and you doubt the children do either. The smallest ones seem to be making a game of trying to dash around him or duck under his arms when he’s distracted, and they shriek with laughter every time he catches them and herds them back onto the street. The last you see before the door swings shut behind him is a child dangling from each of his arms and others wrapped around his legs. Belatedly, you wonder if you should go help him.

He comes back in a few moments later, thankfully without any children. He presses a hand to his chest and staggers back across the room, throwing himself onto the couch. “Terrible demon hell goblins,” he says, but without much heat. And you can see him smiling. “I think, because you are… _ new.” _

“Mm.” He’s probably right. You’re a novelty. “This happened to you and Lalli?”

“Very much. Lalli is good at running. But me—” He shrugs helplessly, still smiling. “Tragedy.”

You don’t want this to become the new favorite game of the town children, so you make a point of spending that afternoon outside. You don’t accomplish much, only bring out a chair and the spinning wheel and ply the dark green wool you’ve already spun. The children gather and hover and you brace yourself to ignore them. But Emil drags a chair outside too and sits down with a book. Though you don’t think he accomplishes much reading, he spends most of his time scolding away children who are daring each other to get closer and closer to the weird Finnish mage. At some point, you should probably inform them that you speak Icelandic. 

You don’t have to do much yourself, but by the time the children start wandering back home in ones and twos, your shoulders are tense enough to be sore. You bring your things inside again, and you have— intentions of starting dinner. But you let Emil persuade you to take a soak in the bathtub before you go back to work. It’s a mistake. You nearly doze off in the water, and by the time you finally bring things to an end and go back into the main room, Lalli has returned home, and he and Emil are most of the way through preparing a meal.

It’s… a comfortable way to let the days go by. A strange way. The last few months have been unusual, yes, but before that you had more than a decade of military routine at Keuruu. It’s what you were accustomed to. You don’t know how to feel about being at loose ends this way. You feel like you ought to be more useful by now. More effective. But the days keep passing, and you don’t have anything urgent demanding your attention.

You think that Lalli and Emil are enjoying the relaxation. However Lalli is spending his days, he seems content. He doesn’t share many details with you, and you don’t press him for information, but you don’t see anything in him to worry you. 

And Lalli seems satisfied with how Emil is doing. It’s still strange seeing Lalli— _ with _someone. With someone outside the family. You’re used to living with Lalli, or at least in close company. You’re not used to him finding Emil sleeping on the couch, telling you, “He likes his hair to look nice,” and reaching down to put Emil’s hair in complete disarray. You’re not used to Lalli with a satisfied smile when Emil wakes and sits up, looking blearily around the room, totally unaware of the state of his hair. Other times he finds Emil sleeping on the couch and wanders off to the bedrooms and comes back with a blanket to drape over him. You didn’t need more reassurance, but you’re even more confident than you were before that if you leave, Lalli won’t be left completely alone.

There are still bad nights. You still haven’t gone back through your trunks, not since that first day. Lalli retrieves blankets and clothing every so often, you just can’t bring yourself to do it as well. But even without those reminders, you can’t help remembering— things. You still sometimes wake up crying. It’s not as bad it was in quarantine, with a room to yourself and some privacy to pull yourself back together. You know this will become easier with time. Eventually. 

It helps being able to close yourself away, and knowing you _ can _ close yourself away without locking out Lalli alone. He has Emil. He has Reynir. He has friends who were in the silent world with him. There are options for him, people who seek out his company, and he isn’t being forced to rely on you because there’s nobody else there for him. That’s unquestionably a relief. It eases a tension you hadn’t realized you were carrying. 

You keep your protections extended over your dream land, as well as Lalli’s, Emil’s, and Reynir’s. You’re all physically close enough that it isn’t a significant effort to protect four people instead of one. Sometimes one or more of the others come to visit you at night. It’s much less strain to pass that time in company than it was in quarantine. You occasionally try to study the connection between Emil and Lalli, but make no progress. Even when you give in and point it out to Reynir and ask if this has anything to do with the magic he knows, he’s just as lost as you. Still, it doesn’t seem to be doing them any harm. It doesn’t ease all your worries, but you’re able to… _ begin _making your peace with leaving it in place between them.

And, as the dream visits continue, you keep an eye on Reynir and Lalli. They don’t make another effort to strand Emil in your forest, but you don’t entirely trust them. Or their better judgment. But nothing happens. Emil seems perfectly at ease, and you try as hard as you can to convince yourself that your earlier encounter was a— mistake, an awful mistake, but one that nobody but you remembers. The visits aren’t every night, but sometimes the others will all invade your forest, or Lalli will drag you over to Emil’s home to spend another night eating cake. Once, you try suggesting to Lalli that he buys enough sweets during the day that this seems unnecessary, and the look he gives you is so disappointed that you almost can’t help smiling. 

The days are pleasant too. You get used to sitting with your spinning wheel by yourself, or in company with Emil. You spin everything Reynir sold you, but you aren’t ready to stop spinning and start knitting. If you want to make a sweater—two sweaters—it wouldn’t hurt to have more yarn. That might be an excuse, but it’s a good excuse. So you give in and buy more wool from Reynir. _ This _time you even manage to tell him what sorts of wool you want, though you’re almost certain the price he names is still much too low. It becomes a comfortable routine, sitting in the main room of the house, exchanging occasional words with Emil as you work. And now that you’ve adjusted to the wheel and the work, you’re spinning thinner yarn, yarn of a quality to make it worth plying and using. You’ll need to set out your skeins for Lalli sometime soon, to see which he likes best. Perhaps you’ll be able to see which ones Emil likes too.

One day, you wake up to the sound of thunder, with rain pounding on your roof. That’s a day when Lalli does _ not _make any move to leave the house. He wakes up after you and Emil, and only drifts out of his room once you start cooking porridge for breakfast. Even then, he just curls up in an armchair and sleepily watches the two of you with his eyes half shut. The weather is cooler than usual, and Lalli is in his largest sweater, one that hangs over the ends of his hands, where he can bury half his face in the high collar. In Keuruu, you’d originally sized it to fit yourself, but once you saw the way Lalli kept finding excuses to touch your work, or pick it up and hold it, it was an easy decision to give it to him instead. 

Today, he curls up so tightly in the chair that the sweater almost swallows him. You don’t know how to spin yarn like that yourself, but in a town like this, perhaps you could find someone to sell you something similar— You think about it as you take a bowl of porridge for yourself and add butter and sugar to it. Lalli doesn’t make any move to come to the stove himself, and instead Emil serves him a bowl without even being asked. You watch as he adds butter and sugar, and then a little extra sugar on top of that. Lalli uncurls far enough to accept it from him, with a little smile and a, “Tack så mycket.”

They eat together, with Lalli taking up the whole chair and Emil sitting on the floor, leaning against the cushion. They eat slowly, without much talking. The rain is still loud outside and the thunder is louder. You finish your breakfast before they do and when they’re done, you walk over to collect their empty bowls from them. Lalli also thanks you in Swedish, just as Emil thanks you in Finnish, and you hear Emil laughing quietly behind you as you bring their bowls to the sink to wash.

It’s a drowsy sort of day. You have chores that could be done, you still have trunks full of belongings that haven’t been unpacked, but you don’t feel any motivation to do those sorts of jobs. You go to your spinning wheel instead. Reynir gave you more wool than you paid for, you’re almost certain. You’ll worry about what to do about that later. For now, you just focus on the work. 

You lose yourself quickly in the half-meditation of the spinning. Lalli stays in his armchair, just sits curled up in that one spot, looking out the window at the rain still sheeting down. Emil talks to him at first, but they soon fall quiet. Lalli doesn’t move from his seat, but Emil gets up, walks off, and returns with a book in hand. He doesn’t go to the couch, but sits back on the floor in front of Lalli, leaned back against the seat, with his head resting against Lalli’s knee.

All of you sit in silence for some time, where all you can hear is the storm outside and the noise of your spinning wheel. You’re all still and quiet for long enough that it startles you to see movement from the corner of your eye. When you look, though, it’s only Lalli. He’s still watching the rain through the window, but he reaches down with one hand to Emil’s hair. He combs his fingers through it, slow and lazy. Even from across the room, you can hear the way Emil sighs, and see the way he leans his head into Lalli’s hand.

You keep spinning, but it’s difficult to ignore them. Emil isn’t reading anymore, and in a few minutes he sets the book aside and shuts his eyes. They sit like that without speaking for a while, long enough that you almost manage to find the rhythm of your own work again.

The silence doesn’t last. Eventually Lalli says, “Your hair is longer than it used to be.”

“Mm.” Emil sighs again, happily, and turns to press his face against Lalli’s knee. “That happens.”

Lalli snorts. “If you keep letting it do that, you’ll turn into Reynir."

“Wow, rude.” They aren’t looking at each other, but from where you sit, you can see them both smiling. After a minute, Emil adds, “That is— _ years. _And I would need... the thing?”

“A braid?” 

“Yes, that.” 

When you look at them and the expressions on their faces, you aren’t sure they remember you’re here. You aren’t trying to hide, but you don’t want to remind them, either. The rain is loud, and Emil still hasn’t opened his eyes. They’re quiet for long enough that you start to wonder if he’s fallen asleep. That would be… good, you think, though you’re reluctant to pursue that thought much further.

Then Lalli gathers up a handful of Emil’s hair and tugs thoughtfully. “It’s long enough to braid now.”

“I guess.” Emil pauses and opens his eyes to look up at Lalli, and his voice gets noticeably hopeful. “I don’t know how braiding _ myself…” _

Lalli shoves lightly at the back of his head, but he also uncurls completely, sitting upright in the seat and letting his legs hang over the edge. Emil settles in front of him, grinning from ear to ear. Lalli hooks his knees over Emil’s shoulders, crossing his ankles over his chest. He’s smiling faintly as he gathers up Emil’s hair, freeing the bits trapped against the chair and his legs, finger-combing it all together into one bundle that he drapes out and spreads across his lap. Then he picks up one narrow section and begins to braid.

And— you try not to watch. You can’t shake the feeling that you’re intruding. Lalli knows you’re here, you’ve been here from the start, he can _ see _ you. Emil would be able to see you too, if he hadn’t shut his eyes again. You’re making noise, they _ must _ both remember you’re here. When you glance up, Emil’s right arm is wrapped around Lalli’s right leg, and the side of his face is resting against Lalli’s thigh. 

You do your best to keep your eyes on your work and ignore the rest. You toy with the idea of getting up and leaving for your room, but then you’ll just be interrupting them in a different way. You focus on the spinning wheel and your hands and the wool, and try not to notice anything else happening in the room.

It lasts… a while. There’s a storm, so you don’t suppose they have any reason to stop quickly. You reach the end of the roving you’d brought out for the day. You could get more, but that would mean needing to stand and disrupt the scene, so instead you begin to ply what you’ve already spun. You don’t know what you’ll do when you reach the end of those supplies. You hadn’t thought that Lalli and Emil would still be— like this. There’s nothing wrong with it. You’re happy for them. But you feel like you’ve already intruded more than they would want you to, and drawing any more attention to yourself now will only make it worse.

Fortunately, Lalli decides that he’s finished before you run out of yarn. From the corner of your eye, you see him sit up straighter in his chair, and he says, “The storm’s over.”

Emil doesn’t answer with words, just a sleepy, “Mm?”

You keep your eyes on your hands, but you do say, “It’s still raining.”

Lalli pushes Emil’s head out of his lap, swinging one leg over him and standing. You glance up and see him stretch, both arms raised, standing on his toes. He says, “That’s fine,” and slips off down the hallway towards his room.

You watch him go, for a moment. When you hear the noise of his bedroom door shutting behind him, you shake yourself and look back to your work.

And then you hear Emil say, “Lalli?” There’s no answer, and with increasing urgency, he repeats, _ “Lalli??” _

You’ve been avoiding looking at him. You know it’s foolish, but you still have to force yourself to do it. But when you catch your first proper sight of Emil, you freeze.

Lalli walks back out through the main room before you can think of what to say. He glances once at Emil, and asks, “What?”

_ “What?!” _

You… don’t know any way to put it better than that. Lalli has braided Emil’s hair. Very much so. There are tiny braids sticking out from his head in all sorts of interesting directions. And that’s just what you can see from your seat. Emil is blindly feeling it all out and looks increasingly appalled with every passing moment.

Lalli says, “Don’t be a baby. I’ll be back later.” 

And then he’s gone.

You and Emil stare at each other in dead silence for a long, awkward moment. He’s still gingerly patting his head and looking horrified at everything he’s feeling.

Then Emil faintly says, “I think, um. _ Knots?” _

“He wouldn’t have,” you say, automatically. Then amend that to, “I hope he wouldn’t have.” Emil doesn’t look especially reassured by that. So after a moment you add, “Come over here and I can take a look.”

Without hesitation, he pushes up to his feet, crosses the room, and drops heavily onto the floor in front of the couch. “Please?”

The spinning wheel is in the way, so you push it off to the side. Emil scoots over so that he’s leaning back against your legs and you can spread his hair out across your lap. You have to look closely and prod at some of the… interesting things Lalli has done with his hair, but after a minute you can say, “No knots. It’s only braids.”

He makes a disbelieving noise.

“Many, _ many _ braids,” you tell him.

At that he sighs hard and reaches up to grab one small braid. He drags it around in front of his face so he can peer at it, and then starts picking at the end. You can’t shake the feeling that you should have noticed this was happening before things reached _ this _ point, you’ve been sitting here being blissfully ignorant all morning, but— In fairness, you would have thought Emil might notice before things got this bad. 

And the slow progress Emil is making on that first little braid is making you feel guilty. 

Before you can think better of it, you ask, “Would you like some help?”

He cranes his head back to look up at you. “Yes,” he says, with feeling. _ “Please.” _

The work is meditative, in the same way spinning is. It’s the same sort of steady, repetitive labor, where you make deceptively slow progress moment by moment, and only see the full, satisfying picture of what you’ve accomplished when you pause to look your work over. You become aware that your knees are digging into Emil’s back, and spread your legs far enough that he can at least rest against the couch. The complicated nest of tiny braids Lalli assembled on the back of Emil’s head requires some concentration to untangle without creating knots of your own, and it takes more effort than you would have guessed. Emil works on the braids he can reach from the front and grumbles at you in Swedish and broken Finnish, and the words wash over you as you sink into the rhythm of the work.

He runs out of words before you run out of braids. Once he’s done all the braids he can easily reach himself, he seems content to let you keep working. He lists sideways in a way that makes you think he’s at least half asleep, and the side of his face presses into your leg. Every time he exhales, you can feel his breath through the fabric of your pants.

You don’t rush your way through the end of things. There doesn’t seem to be a point. If he’s asleep, he isn’t in a hurry. And you don’t have anything urgent to be done. Once you’re finished with this, what’s next? More spinning? You’ve already spent the rest of your day with the spinning wheel, so you take your time undoing those last few braids. 

And— even once you’re done and you have his hair draped over your thighs, all unbraided, you’re reluctant to bring an end to things. He’s sleeping. You don’t have a reason to disturb him. You take a small section of hair and run your hands through it, feeling for any lingering tangles. Then another. At his temple, you find the base of one little braid, still just enough left to catch your fingers. You comb it out, carefully, until that hair is smooth and straight again, lying flat against your pants. 

Between your legs, Emil turns his face further into your thigh and softly sighs. You freeze for an instant, but he doesn’t react in any other way. When he doesn’t say anything to you, doesn’t move, you go back to combing your fingers through his hair. He _ must _be asleep. You hope.

You find the remains of one or two other tiny braids as you work your way across his scalp. He doesn’t respond when you undo those, and gradually, you convince yourself that he’s been sleeping this whole time. That illusion lasts until he mumbles, “You’re _ very _ good at that. Has anyone... said to you?” 

It’s a struggle not to jump. You aren’t sure you manage. 

You do drop the hair you’d been combing your fingers through and Emil makes a drowsy noise of protest, though he doesn’t do anything else. Or leave. He’s still leaning into your leg and doesn’t seem to have any intention of moving.

After a long silent moment, he adds, “Do _ you _know how braiding?”

“I used to braid my sister’s hair,” you say, before you can think better of it. You bite your tongue. This is going to start a conversation you aren’t able to have. You silently curse, waiting for Emil to ask you something more, about— about _ anything, _all of this still feels too raw to touch.

But perhaps he is more asleep than it seemed, because he doesn’t say anything else, he only stays where he is, limp and relaxed, leaning into the side of your leg, breathing slow and quiet.

For lack of anything better to do, you pick up a lock of his hair and begin braiding.

You start at one temple and work your way backward, collecting additional hair into the braid as you go. His hair is still too short for a single long braid like you used to do for Tuuri. You gather his hair slowly, smoothing it out as you go, so the braid lies flat against his head. Once you’ve gone as far as you can, you braid the hair you’re holding out to its end. Then you begin again from the crown of his head. 

After that braid is complete, you have to move him, so you can reach the hair trapped between his head and your thigh. You nudge him gently over, so that he slumps in the opposite direction and leans against your other leg. He makes an incoherent noise of protest, but he wraps one arm around your leg and pats your knee reassuringly. You have no idea what message he hopes to convey, but he seems happy enough. You braid from his temple to the back of his head, in mirror to the first braid. 

All three short braids sit together on your lap. You pull out the ends of them just far enough that you reach the last places where you pulled in new hair from his head, then braid those three loose ends together. His hair is barely long enough to let you do it, and the moment he moves it will all come apart. So after a moment’s thought, you take the closest skein of yarn and pull a piece off the tail that’s just long enough to tie around the end of the braid. 

And then… you suppose that’s all. Unless you wanted to pull it all out and begin again. But that seems— presumptuous.

Emil isn’t making any move to leave, though. You wait for him to notice you’ve finished and to get up, but it doesn’t happen. When you clear your throat, he doesn’t react at all. Now, you think he might _ actually _be asleep, and you’re reluctant to disturb him without reason. 

When you look around, you do notice a book that Emil abandoned on the other side of the couch at some point. If you stretch, you can just barely manage to reach it without dislodging him. You get a look at the cover and recognize one of Tuuri’s old books, and your chest tightens. But it’s… better to have someone making use of this than to have it rotting away in the bottom of a trunk for the rest of your life. 

You leaf idly through the book, waiting for Emil to wake up. But that doesn’t happen until the door opens and Lalli arrives back home. As he comes in, wiping his boots off on the entrance rug, Emil jumps and sits upright. You jump a bit yourself, and fight a brief, irrational surge of guilt. 

Emil settles back down against the couch, pinning you in place, and points dramatically at Lalli, _ “You,” _ he declares, “are a terrible person. Awful. Horrible. _ Dreadful.” _

Lalli looks completely unconcerned, and even more completely unrepentant. “I told you not to be a baby about it.”

“A _ baby—” _

“And besides, you got what you wanted.”

Emil pauses in the middle of his outraged protest, and reaches up to gingerly pat at his hair. He traces one braid from the front to the back of his head, then untangles his other arm from around your leg so he can feel everything out more thoroughly. You can’t see his face, but you can see Lalli smile faintly with satisfaction as he watches Emil.

Lalli glances up at you and says, “I got fresh bread,” though the bag he’s carrying seems a bit oversized for _ just _ bread. When he turns and heads toward the kitchen table, Emil pushes his way upright to follow him. You stand as well, though you freeze momentarily when Emil turns to thank you for being _ much _kinder and more generous than your cousin. Lalli’s only response is to snort and roll his eyes, then he pulls a large pastry from his bag and holds the bag out past Emil to you. 

Once you’ve surrendered and taken something to eat as well, Lalli gives Emil the bag and takes his own pastry off to the bathroom, where you hear the sound of the bathtub running. You go back to your spinning wheel, and try to recapture some of the meditative calm of earlier. Lalli takes his time in the bath, while Emil mutters to himself in Swedish and drifts around the kitchen, pausing every so often to admire himself in reflective surfaces.

The next time Lalli leaves the two of you home together, you brace yourself to have— a conversation. You have to force yourself into it. You can see too many ways that this could go unpleasantly. But it’s Lalli’s happiness at stake. Maybe his future. If you don’t at least try to take care of him, you don’t deserve to call yourself his family. You’ll just— ignore the times you failed to exercise your better judgment. Even if you’ve made mistakes before, you can still begin doing right by him _ now. _

It still isn’t easy. You agonize over how to start the conversation for long enough that you finally give up and just dive into it. The room is quiet, except for your spinning wheel. Emil is lounging at the other end of the couch, reading a book. Into the silence, you say, “I have a question for you. About my cousin.”

Emil sits up and shuts the book. “What is it?”

“What is he to you?” you say. Emil’s face is blank. You curse to yourself and try to think of a simpler way to ask it. “You and Lalli are… close.”

“Yes,” he easily agrees.

“Describe how.”

Emil makes a bit of a face and says, “Hard questions…” but he doesn’t look unhappy. He taps his fingers thoughtfully on one leg for a few seconds. You just watch him. Finally he starts, “We’re like—” He makes some large, expressive gesture with both arms that really doesn’t convey whatever meaning he expects it to. He watches you expectantly, but your face is still perfectly blank and uncomprehending, and you see the tips of his ears go red.

“I can try, ah, one more,” he says. He brings both his hands up between you, letting his fingers lace together so each hand grips the other tightly. “Like this.”

It’s about what you thought. It isn’t right to call yourself disappointed when this is what you expected all along. “You’re tied together,” you say. “Joined.”

Emil suddenly perks up. “Oh! I know. Sorry. Lalli gave me words— Gave me a word. I forgot.” He gestures grandly. _ “Henkiystävä.” _

Despite everything, your heart sinks. “That’s an old word,” you say. It sounds like your voice is coming from very far away. “People don’t say that anymore. The word you want is ‘sielunkumppani.’”

He blinks. “Say this again, please?”

“Sielunkumppani.”

Emil repeats it after you a couple times, slowly, until he’s sure he has it. Then suddenly he smiles, all bright and warm and open and brilliant, and you can see so very clearly why Lalli loves him. You have to look away for a moment and drag yourself back under control before you can look him in the eyes again.

You try to focus on the spinning for the rest of the day. You want to lose yourself in it. You don’t want to remember there’s a world outside of the work. You need to focus on the spinning. If you’re planning to make a sweater anytime this year, you need to focus.

Still, whenever Emil has a question about what a word means, or how it’s pronounced— All he has to do is glance your way, and he has your attention. He reads quietly, except for those occasional questions, but you can’t stop yourself from being constantly, painfully aware of him sitting beside you. He’s close enough to touch. You won’t touch him, because you aren’t— He just told you what he and Lalli are. He just told you. You aren’t going to touch him. He was never going to touch you. He leans in close to point out a confusing word in the book and watches your mouth as you sound it out for him, and shame twists and knots deep in your stomach.

You’re trying to convince yourself to make some excuse to leave and go to your room, to the market, _ anything, _when Lalli comes home. You’re looking at Emil, and you see his face light up the moment Lalli walks through the door. He’s on his feet right away, crossing the floor to Lalli, taking the bags Lalli is carrying. You look at your spinning wheel and focus on your work and try not to see the rest of the room. It works for a few moments, until Lalli slips in close and places a fresh roll on your leg, and you have to stop spinning before you knock it off your lap. It’s still warm, and the heat soaks into your hand as you hold it. Lalli is watching you from a few steps away, but you don’t know what he’s looking for.

He and Emil fall into conversation soon enough. You’re getting used to Emil’s accent when he tries to speak Finnish, and you think that despite your complete lack of effort, you’re starting to pick up a few words of Swedish. It means you have to work a little harder not to eavesdrop. Once you finish your roll and go back to your spinning, the noise of the wheel helps. Knowing Emil is across the room, with Lalli, _ not _beside you— That helps too. 

Even then, you can’t miss it when Emil announces, _ “Sielunkumppani.” _

You don’t react. You aren’t going to react. You’re the one who taught him that word, you have no excuse to flinch at hearing it now.

Lalli makes a sharp negative noise and says, “No.”

Emil hesitates. “Onni said this is better—” 

“Then Onni’s being stupid.” There’s a pause, and at the edge of your vision you see both of them look your way, but you remain silent. “I know what I told you.”

“Onni said— Henkiystävä is… old?”

Lalli snorts. “So? Why would I care about that? _ Henkiystävä.” _

Emil shrugs and agrees with him easily enough, though both of them keep glancing at you as though they’re expecting you to argue. It doesn’t matter. It all means the same thing. Spirit companion, soul’s partner, it tells you clearly enough what it is that they share. Whatever word they prefer is immaterial. You’ve been told clearly enough how inexcusable your behavior is. You should have _ known _before being told outright, but it was so tempting to believe that there was some kind of misunderstanding, that there might actually be a way to— 

It doesn’t matter. You bend in close over your work and hum under your breath as you spin. It’s barely magic, but it gives you something additional to occupy your attention and forces you to keep your breathing steady. You hum over the spinning wheel and try not to listen to your cousin talking to his soulmate. 

You stay up late that night, spinning, hoping despite everything that if you work just a little longer, maybe it will finally settle your mind and heart. It doesn’t. But it does keep you occupied until Lalli and Emil have both gone to bed. You let yourself slip very slightly away from consciousness, just far enough to glimpse the world of their dreams.

Now, the link you couldn’t understand makes much more sense. Emil shouldn’t be able to dream in the same way as you and Lalli, but when they’re tied this way, when their _ spirits _are bound this way— Perhaps another mage would know for certain. But you can see enough. You’re only half-asleep, watching pale red butterflies gather around them. You could join them, you know, but the gnawing certainty that you’d be an unwanted intruder grows and grows until it’s too strong to ignore. 

You wake yourself up the rest of the way. You take your time in putting away your things. In changing your clothes. In preparing your bed. Eventually, you have to fall asleep, but you spend the night in your own forest without even looking past the boundaries of your dream. Emil and Lalli are occupied. Reynir doesn’t visit you. That’s good. You don’t want company right now. You just pace through your forest trying to occupy yourself until the morning finally arrives.

After that, you’d like a day on your own. Some solitude and time alone with your thoughts to recenter yourself. Unfortunately, this appears to be a day when Lalli is conspiring to get you out of the house. Your first hint is when Reynir shows up at your house before you’re even done with breakfast, and within a few minutes, has started talking about how there’s a nice little hot spring near the village. Your second hint is when Lalli immediately follows that up by saying he wants to go visit a hot spring. They know that _ you _know they don’t speak each other’s languages. This isn’t remotely close to being subtle.

“All you had to do was ask,” you tell Lalli, but he just sniffs, looks away, and ignores you.

It’s fine. It would have been nice to have a day to yourself, but you can’t muster the energy to push back against conflicting plans. And all three of the others seem excited about the excursion, so you let yourself be pulled along in their wake.

The hot spring is… farther away than you’d gathered from Reynir’s musings. If you’d paused to ask yourself why he came to your house so early in the morning, here’s your explanation. It takes some time for all of you to gather your things, and Lalli slips away to buy some food in town to bring along, but it’s only mid-morning when the four of you set out from town, headed into the hills, in the opposite direction from the main road. The others talk, some, but you mostly just follow them and let your mind drift away.

The sun is high overhead by the time you arrive at your destination, and the walk was long enough—and hilly enough—to make the idea of a hot soak sound very appealing. Reynir knows what he’s looking for, so he’s the first one to spot the little circle of water, ringed with flat stones. You translate for the others, though you think they can gather what he’s so excited about from context. He’s mostly left you in peace for the walk, but as you reach the spring, _ now _ all the words spill out from him as he tells you about the spring, and how his mother says her father helped to edge the spring in stones and make it more usable, and when he was little he used to make his siblings bring him out here all the time, and— 

It’s a little much. However, Lalli hasn’t been listening to Reynir, he’s already kicking off his shoes and stripping off his clothing and dropping it in a pile on the grass. Emil isn’t far behind him, and you’re spared further conversation when Reynir notices the others getting ahead of him and loses track of what he’s saying to you as he races to catch up.

“Put your shoes _ on _the rest of your clothing, or find a rock to use,” he says. “If it gets windy and you’re distracted, you might have some regrets later, don’t ask me how I know—” 

You translate. “Weigh your clothing down before you get in,” you tell Lalli and Emil. Lalli is already heading for the water, so you bend and pick up a suitable rock and head for his things. 

Lalli glances at you just long enough to roll his eyes, but turns, scoops up a rock and drops it on his clothes before he makes a beeline for the water. Instead, you turn to Emil, since you aren’t sure he quite understood what you were telling him to do.

“You don’t want to lose your clothes to the wind,” you say. Instead of waiting for him to make the connection, you collect his clothing into one pile and put the stone in the middle. There.

When you straighten, he’s beaming at you, and you blink once, unsure what to do next. He only says, “Thank you!” Then he turns toward the spring again and says, “Lalli, _ wait—” _and heads off towards the water.

The others are all in the water by the time you begin undressing. You don’t rush, and you aren’t putting this off. But you turn slightly away, so you can’t see if the others are watching you, waiting for you to catch up. You take off your clothing at a measured pace, collect it, weigh it down, and then take one breath to center yourself before turning to look at the others. 

Reynir is certainly not watching you. He’s up to his neck in the water, with his head resting on the stones at the edge and his eyes shut. Lalli isn’t looking at you because he’s speculatively eyeing Reynir’s braid, lying on the ground behind him.

“Lalli,” you say. He sighs once and glances at you, then crosses his arms across his chest and shuts his eyes, like that’s all he was planning to do this whole time. There’s a space between Emill and Lalli, but you pause and look down into the spring. You should have watched to see how the others climbed in.

Emil notices you hesitating. “There is— Stone? Rock? Under the water.”

“He means there’s a step. They put rocks around the inside edge too.” He opens one eye, looking up at you. “You can sit on it.”

The water isn’t so hot that it’s uncomfortable, but you still pause with one leg in the water and take a moment to adjust before you lower yourself down into the water. You shiver as you sink in up to your shoulders, but you can’t help sighing as the heat starts to soak into your muscles. You hadn’t realized how sore you were until now. The stones in the water sit high enough that they leave half your chest exposed, so you slouch down, lying back, until the water is nearly up to your chin. The others are talking, but you close your eyes and just bask.

The others address something to you every so often, but you reply with wordless noises, without even properly hearing what they say. You’re so relaxed that you’re half-asleep, and you aren’t sure you could remember how to speak right now even if you tried.

The water feels so good that for a while you’re tempted to actually sleep, but eventually the heat gets to be a little much, and you reluctantly sit up. And you realize, belatedly, that things have fallen quiet around you. You open your eyes and look at the others, and aren’t entirely surprised to see Reynir asleep, still with his head hanging back over the stone edge. Lalli looks to be asleep too, though he’s lying face-down with his head pillowed on his arms on the rocks, curled up on the stone seat. 

At that point, you’re expecting Emil to be asleep too. But when you look over at him, he’s awake. He grins at you and waves, and leans towards you to whisper, “So quiet, I didn’t want to disturb.”

“Mm.” You don’t disagree with his assessment. Not that you think the others are in need of rest, but it is a very peaceful scene. You can’t see much of Reynir’s face from this angle, but just past Lalli’s arms, you can make out a little half-smile on his face. Good. You think you do a decent job of understanding him, but it’s nice to have clear confirmation that he’s doing well.

Emil shifts, but only to lift his arms out of the water and put his elbows up on the stones around the edge of the spring. He sighs happily, reclining back and letting his legs drift out into the middle of the water. You tense a little, bracing for conversation of some kind, but it doesn’t come. He doesn’t sleep, but just lounges where he is, gazing off over the landscape, or occasionally, looking fondly at Lalli. Slowly, gradually, you start to relax again, and your eyes drift shut.

You almost jump out of your skin when you feel a touch on your shoulder.

“Sorry!” Emil’s voice is still very quiet. “Sorry, sorry. Just, they are very red?”

You don’t quite understand until he points at Lalli. Even past his arm, you can see that his face is more flushed than you like. Reynir isn’t doing much better. And when you take a closer look at Emil, he’s also showing the effects of the heat. His flush extends over his shoulders and down his chest.

Just as you’re thinking that, he helpfully adds, “You also are very red.”

Right. You’re still enjoying the warmth, and aren’t looking forward to the cold air, but you also have to remember that you all need to be able to walk home after this. “Get Reynir,” you tell Emil, then move over closer to Lalli.

It doesn’t ever take much to wake Lalli, but convincing him to stay awake can be more difficult. As soon as you say, “Lalli,” he cracks one eye open and looks at you. But when you say, “You’re overheating,” he just shrugs, shuts his eye again, and starts ignoring you. It takes a little time to persuade him that no, you aren’t going to let this go, and then he heaves a sigh, gives you an unhappy look, and straightens and boosts himself out onto the edge of the spring. Emil and Reynir are already out of the water, and you join them. The brief flash of dizziness that hits when you stand up straight is enough to convince you that this was the right decision.

You shiver at first, when the wind hits you. It’s summer and the sun is still high, but it feels freezing after soaking in the hot spring. You don’t have anything with you but your clothing, nothing to towel off with, but it’s still early afternoon, and you assume the plan is to yourself dry in the air before you get dressed and leave. Reynir says as much to you just as you just as you reach that conclusion, so you just nod and say, “Mmh.”

The others wander around, chattering to each other in enough languages that it makes your head hurt trying to keep up. You sit down in the grass and watch them. But then sitting feels like unnecessary effort and you lie down. The next thing you’re aware of is a hand on your shoulder, waking you up.

When you open your eyes, Emil is crouched in the grass next to you, one hand still on your shoulder. With his other hand, he’s trying to fend off Lalli, who easily dodges around Emil and prods you in the side with one foot.

“I’m awake,” you tell them.

Lalli says, “It’s time to go back.”

When you look around— Yes, the sun is considerably lower in the sky than the last time you looked. “How long was I asleep?”

He just shrugs. “You need the rest.”

You don’t agree and that isn’t really an answer, but before you can argue or repeat the question, Emil adds, “Looked very relaxed.”

Fine. You can let this go. As you start getting dressed, Reynir joins you, hopping on one foot as he pulls on a boot. “Oh, good! We didn’t want to bother you, but we probably ought to head back soon, or my mom will start worrying.”

The others keep making conversation with you as you all walk back to the town, but after soaking in the hot spring and napping in the grass, you feel relaxed enough that it isn’t much of a trial to speak with them. You get back home just as the sun is starting to set, and you… _ could _ accomplish useful things this evening. But that kind of work has no appeal right now. And you think that Lalli and Emil feel as loose and lazy as you do. All three of you sit around in the main room until you realize the others are falling asleep where they sit and send them off to their rooms. One more time you briefly consider doing work of some kind, but— No, not today. You go to your room as well, and sleep through the night both in your bed and in your forest.

It isn’t a bad life. You should have realized sooner that it couldn’t last.

The trouble is that you’ve let yourself get too comfortable with this. You’ve made so many excuses for every time you _ should _ have controlled yourself that you can’t tell when you _ have _ to control yourself anymore. And now— Now it isn’t even an issue of being limited to what Reynir decides to do, or Lalli. What Emil and Lalli have has opened doors that you don’t understand, and you haven’t been able to force yourself to pretend they don’t exist.

Emil has visited you before. You made it so he could visit you. But this night, you’re the one who’s unfocused and restless, alone in your forest. You’re aware of the glow of light through windows right outside your dream, and even though you can’t _ see _ them, you know they’re _ there, _and you’re turning at every small noise expecting Emil or Lalli or Reynir to walk into your dream, but the forest is always empty— And you crack.

You pace for ages at the edge of your forest, wondering whether or not you should do it—you shouldn’t—but you still step out over the water and slip into the memory of Emil’s home. You know it well enough by now, and there are no real surprises to set you even further on edge. You’ve already done more than enough of that all on your own.

The dream isn’t large, and you can hear Emil’s voice from down the hall. It’s the familiar conversation with his nanny, and you don’t bother to listen. You just make your way to the dining room and lean against a wall and wait for him to notice you. It takes a few minutes. He’s more lucid when Lalli is here, you think, and your stomach twists.

It doesn’t matter, because you don’t take the hint and leave. You stay where you are until Emil turns and sees you. You watch his face light up with a smile and let him invite you in, to take off your cloak, to have a seat, to have a piece of cake. Even though you know it’s a dream, the sweets are still a novelty you haven’t grown tired of. But tonight you only have a single bite, and barely manage to swallow even that. Emil’s been distracted by the dream again, and is busy snapping at his nanny, so he doesn’t notice when you set the cake aside, nearly untouched.

Eventually he flops down on the couch beside you. His cheeks are a bit pink. “Sorry— I know I’ve told you before that I’m not like this anymore, but that never stops being embarrassing.”

“Mmh.” You don’t have a more thoughtful reply prepared. Your mind is spinning in circles and it’s almost impossible to speak or breathe or _ think _ and you don’t know what to do— You know what you should do. You should leave. You shouldn’t be here, you shouldn’t be going behind Lalli’s back, you shouldn’t be _ letting _Emil go behind Lalli’s back. You already know you aren’t strong enough to force yourself to go.

When Emil turns to face you, curling one leg up onto the couch, you don’t tell him no. When he reaches up to touch your cheek and guides you down towards him, you don’t tell him no. You let yourself be drawn in close, you let him set one hand on your arm, you let him kiss you. You can’t bear to watch it, but you close your eyes and let it all happen. And when your lips meet his, a helpless little noise escapes you. Emil sucks in a sharp breath and his hand clutches at your sleeve. 

His mouth moves against yours, and he whispers, “Onni—” 

There’s a question in there you don’t know how to answer, or even how to understand. You let him kiss you, only that’s— that’s not right. He’s kissing you, and you’re kissing him too, kissing him back, deep and hungry and desperate. You’re painfully, achingly aware of every place he’s touching you, his knee against your leg, his hand on your arm. His fingers are light against your cheek and you want so badly to lean into that contact. You thought you could set this aside, ignore it, _ avoid _ it somehow, and you knew that was foolish and you wanted to believe it anyways. Your arm is around Emil’s waist, pulling him in towards you, and you shouldn’t be here and _ know _you shouldn’t be here and still can’t bring yourself to leave.

Emil is urging you forward, over him, and you lean into him thoughtlessly, unable to think of anything but the feeling of his mouth on yours, his tongue against yours, needing _ more— _until the two of you overbalance. Emil yelps against your mouth as you tip, and grabs hard at your shirt. You manage to catch yourself on one elbow before you land on top of him. Your other arm is trapped beneath him. The kiss is broken, but this is almost more intimate. Without the kiss to focus on, all you can do is look at him, laid out under you. His hair is bright against the cushions and you can see the flush on his cheeks. You can feel the heat of his body against yours, and the movement of his stomach with every breath he takes.

You’re frozen, just watching him, as he slips one arm around you and places his hand against your back. He lets that hand drift slowly up along your spine, then down again, and it drags the fabric of your shirt along with it. Your skin feels unbearably sensitive, and the slide of the fabric is almost too much to handle. The hem of your shirt slips up beyond the waistband of your pants, and you feel a draft against your bare skin and can’t help shivering. 

If there was a time to bring things to a stop, this would be it. You still can’t convince yourself to pull away.

Emil breaks the spell. He shifts beneath you, and you tense, preparing to pull back. But he only moves one leg a little further, shifting it outward and bracing his foot against the cushions. You can feel his thigh pressing against your waist. Your bodies are aligned even more completely now, chest, waist, hips, and you feel his— You should go. You should leave before you make this any worse. You can’t.

Your throat is closed too tightly to speak. A part of you is silently begging Emil to stop this. He doesn’t. Instead, he reaches up to touch your cheek again. Softly, he says, “Is this… okay?”

You turn your face into his hand, helpless, and all you manage is a quiet, desperate, _ “Please.” _

It’s shameful, and your cheeks burn, but Emil doesn’t seem to notice. And the way he smiles for you is so bright and brilliant that it’s impossible to look away. He pulls you down into another kiss, and you can’t fight it. You thread one hand into his hair, cradling his head as you kiss him, and the way he moans into your mouth makes you shudder. His legs are parted around yours, and you can _ feel _ him hard against you as his hips roll up against yours. You’re responding, you don’t know how anyone wouldn’t respond to _ him, _ like _ this, _ and despair and _ wanting _both pull at your heart until your chest aches with it.

You let yourself sink into him, pressing him down into the cushions. His hands are trapped between your bodies. He’s tugging at the ribbon holding his sweater closed with one hand, and fumbling for his waistband with the other. But when you’re so close, you can feel how clumsy his fingers are, how easy it is to make him clumsier. It sends a thrill through you every time you inadvertently tug at his hair, or bite his lips, and his breath catches and he loses track of what his hands are doing.

And— Before you can think about it too hard, you pull away from the kiss. Not much, just far enough that you can drop your head and nip the side of Emil’s neck. He makes a loud, shocked noise that sends a burst of heat through you, and grabs at your shirt, dragging hard on the fabric. You hear a seam pop, but you ignore that and kiss the spot you just bit, pressing your lips to his neck. Emil is breathing hard now, and manages to free one hand from your shirt to bring up to the back of your head, holding you there against him. His legs are tangled around yours now, pulling your hips in against his own. You’re so hard already, and he keeps moving under you, unable to hold still, rolling his hips into yours, begging without words.

You’ve already surrendered, you’re going to give him everything he asks of you. You can’t even pretend you’re going to refuse him anything. You have to slide your hand from his hair to free it, and he gasps, arching into you. You push aside his sweater, set your hand against his waist, and let it drift downwards, following the seam of his shirt. You’re still kissing his neck, listening to the way he breathes and every small noise he makes. You’ve just found the hem of his shirt and are pushing it up past his waistband when you think— You think you hear a footstep behind you and your blood freezes in your veins and all you can think is _ Lalli. _

When you struggle upright, Emil lets you go. You look around the room, your heart pounding, already trying to find the words for some sort of explanation, some kind of excuse for what you’ve done. But there’s nobody here. 

Emil props himself up on one elbow, looking around too. “My nanny _ should _ be gone for a while,” he says. “She doesn’t come back to take care of things until after I’m asleep, I think.”

“Mm.” It’s all you can manage right now. Maybe you didn’t hear anything after all. But you know, you _ know _ how close Emil and Lalli are. It wouldn’t have been unusual to see him here to begin with. And even if you’re hearing things and you’re still alone for the moment, you’re suddenly utterly convinced—terrified—that he’s going to walk in at any moment and _ see _you.

You feel a hand on your thigh and can’t stop yourself from flinching. When you look down, Emil is watching you. He pats your leg again, more firm and reassuring this time. He says. “Sorry, I should have thought— We don’t need to do this out here. My old bedroom is still around. Or at least the bedroom door is. Would that be better?”

You’re almost able to say that you ought to stop. Almost. But once you focus on him— He looks so apologetic. His face is still flushed pink. His hair is still messy, and you can remember how it felt against your fingers as you kissed him. His legs are still spread around you where you’re kneeling on the cushions and his hand is still resting on your thigh. And you say, “Yes.”

He smiles again for you, and you’re helpless, trapped where you are, just watching him. You’d do so much to keep him smiling at you this way. You ought to be terrified of what that means—and you are—but you still desperately want more.

Emil makes the first move. He swings his legs out from around you and stands. He braces both hands on his lower back and arches, grimacing, until you hear his back pop. He shakes his head and laughs and grins down at you, and reaches out to you with one hand. You take it.

You were only expecting him to help you up, but he doesn’t let go even after you’re standing. He keeps hold of your hand as he leads you down a hallway. His laces his fingers with yours and you echo the gesture before you can help yourself. His thumb traces a lazy circle on the back of your hand. Every place he touches you, your skin burns, and it’s too much and not enough and you can’t tell if you want more or you desperately need it to stop. 

When he guides through a door, you hardly even see the room you enter. He turns to face you, and it’s impossible for you to pay attention to anything but him. He steps up closer, and you— You can’t bring yourself to look into his eyes, it’s just too much right now. You can’t turn away from him, but you can’t meet his eyes, and you don’t know what to say to him.

Emil’s hair is messy. He likes it to be neat. _ That’s what Lalli told you, _ you think, and then try to forget you remembered that. Your stomach knots and your throat is closed too tightly to speak, but you reach up with your free hand and carefully brush his hair back from his face. He makes a soft little noise and leans into your hand, and your breath catches at the _ sight _ of him like this. 

You comb your fingers through his hair again and again, even after it’s all settled. Emil’s eyes stay shut, his lips are just barely parted, and you couldn’t look away from his face if you tried. He steps closer, gradually, until the two of you are chest to chest. He drops your hand, and places both of his on your waist. You weren’t expecting it and jump before you can help yourself. 

His eyes fly open and you try to hold back a rush of disappointment that you interrupted the moment. You still can’t quite manage to look into his eyes, but you’re at least watching his face and can see the delighted, dazed way he smiles up at you. He sways in against you and says, “For the record, feel free to do that _ anytime. _ Just in case you were wondering.”

It’s too much. You don’t want this to end, but you don’t know what to say, you don’t know how to _ breathe. _ Emil is watching you. He’s waiting for you to respond in some way. You don’t know what to do, what you should do, what you _ can _do.

You carefully remove his hands from your waist and sink down onto one knee. 

It takes Emil a moment to understand, but when you reach out with one hand to touch his hip, he manages, “Oh— _ Oh.” _

His face is bright red. He seems frozen now, with the back of one hand pressed against his mouth and the other hand hovering over your shoulder. It steadies you, a little, to see him also uncertain. And you do need to make sure this is something he wants. Quietly, you ask, “Yes?”

“Yes,” he says, almost before you’re done asking the question. _ “Yes.” _

You still move slowly. You’ve done this before, but it’s been— some time. Your hands keep trying to shake, but you keep them steady as you push up Emil’s shirt and find the waistband of his pants. His breath catches, and when you glance upward, you can see that his eyes are wide as he watches you. 

When you undo the button and slide the zipper down, you can hear Emil make a muffled noise in the back of his throat. His hand finally comes to rest on your shoulder, gripping tightly. You move one hand to his waist, steadying him. With the other, you pull his pants downward, just a little, just enough that you can— 

Emil vanishes, and the room abruptly goes flat and colorless. Everything is still here, the unreality of it is just more obvious now, even to the naked eye. You blink for a moment, confused, before you understand. He must have woken up. It’s the only explanation that makes sense. 

And you feel a little detached from reality yourself. You stand and sway for a moment before catching your balance. What are you doing? What were you _ thinking? _It’s bad enough you came here, when you should have known better. But everything you’ve done has only made a bad situation worse.

You force yourself awake, because you can’t stand to be there, inside Emil’s dream, thinking about what you were about to do. Lalli is sleeping only two rooms over. How could you—? It’s inexcusable. 

You lie in your bed, staring at the ceiling without seeing anything. You’re too hot and your skin feels too tight, and you _ feel _ like you just had Emil in your arms, had your body pressed against his, felt his— You should be ashamed of how difficult it is to fight the urge to go back into the dream and wait for Emil to sleep again. You shouldn’t be thinking of how to find him again, you should be thinking of how to leave, _ now, _ before you make things any worse. How many mistakes can you make before you finally _ learn? _

You hear a quiet knock.

And— You shouldn’t respond. If you make just one single good decision this night, it should be to ignore that. Ignore him. You should pretend to be asleep and wait for him to leave.

You still cross the room and open the door. 

It’s Emil. Not like he was in the dream, dressed in expensive clothing, at ease in the middle of his own home. Now he’s dressed in worn sleeping clothes as he stands in the hall outside your room, nervously rubbing at one arm. But the way he looks up at you is just the same, and so is the way he shifts forward and leans in towards you. 

You reach out to him without thinking, and he steps into your arms. He rests his hands on your shoulders and looks as though he wants to speak, but he hesitates. You don’t trust your voice right now, so you simply hold him and wait for him to talk. You try to convince yourself to turn him away. You can do this, if you have to. And you _ do _have to. You can’t afford to indulge yourself like this when it comes at Lalli’s expense.

Emil’s voice is quiet when he says, “Can we—?” 

Just that much shatters your resolve. You bend down to him, and he turns his face up toward you, and as you kiss, he makes a soft, pleased noise into your mouth. It begins gently, but you can feel the urgency in Emil as he presses closer to you, and you aren’t doing much better at restraining yourself. He manages to kick the door shut behind him, and you can’t help wincing at the noise it makes, but despite everything, you still can’t bring yourself to stop. 

You have some thought of leading Emil over to the bed, but that doesn’t last. You wind up with his back to the wall and you pressed against him, with one hand braced on either side of his shoulders. At first his hands are at your waist, but as you kiss, they begin to wander. Your clothing here is thinner than what you wore in the dream. Every touch feels much more intense, and you’re painfully aware of how little separates his hands from your bare skin.

You need to do something more for him. It’s a struggle to think right now, hard to articulate anything further than the need for _ more, _but you manage to press one thigh in between his legs. He breaks the kiss, gasping for air. You can feel how hard he is and rock against him, and his eyes flutter shut. When he rolls his hips into your leg, you match his movements. You drop your mouth to his neck again, and you— You shouldn’t leave marks where they could be seen, not without asking him, and you don’t think you’ll be able to ask now. 

Emil shivers underneath you when you bite—lightly, _ carefully _ —at the side of his neck. He doesn’t stop moving against you, and you can feel the length of his cock press against your leg every time he moves his hips. But even though he’s distracted, he also manages to work his hands up under your shirt. You realize what he’s doing, but it doesn’t completely register until his palms press flat against the bare skin of your lower back. You hold back an embarrassing noise, barely, but as his hands drift up towards your shoulders and you can _ feel _ the warmth of him against you, it’s your turn to shiver.

He turns his head toward you, so his lips are right next to your ear, and whispers, “Onni,” but his words trail off as you press your thigh against him, and all you can hear is the way he’s breathing as he rocks against you. But he tries again. “Onni— Bed?”

At first, your immediate instinct is to protest. You don’t want to move apart, you don’t want to _ stop, _but you bite that back and take a slow, deep breath and force yourself to think. He’s right. The bed will be better than this.

So now, it’s your turn to take him by the hand and lead him onward. It shouldn’t feel so daring to take his hand in yours, but your face burns, and you can’t bring yourself to look at him.

It isn’t a large room. The bed is only a few steps away, and when you reach it, you realize you have no idea what to do next. You pause, awkwardly, and turn to him. You don’t know— You know things you _ could _ do, but none of them feel _ right, _and you don’t know how to say that to Emil.

You don’t have to figure it out. When you turn to look at him, the moonlight illuminates his face, and you can see the way he’s smiling at you. You freeze there, just looking, and before you can force yourself into action, he makes a move.

He slips his hands up under the hem of your shirt again and says, hopefully, “This— gone?”

You pull it off over your head, and you feel a moment of uncertainty, but that gets washed away as soon as you see the way he’s beaming at you. He reaches out to touch your bare arm, and you can’t help shivering. Still. There’s an uneasy feeling in your chest that you can’t quite shake and you know you’ve both seen more of each other than this, you went through quarantine examinations together, but _ still— _

You shut your eyes for a moment to collect yourself, and manage to keep your voice steady when you say, “Yours too?”

Emil complies so enthusiastically you feel guilty about your own response. It’s still easier this way. Easier to distract yourself from tying yourself in knots overthinking your own actions, when Emil is here, _ real, _and watching you like this. Without thinking about it, you take a half step in towards him. You aren’t quite touching, but you’re close enough to see the way his chest moves with every breath. Both of you are frozen, just looking at each other. You reach out to take his hand again.

He lets you capture his hand in yours again, but immediately laces your fingers together. He ducks his head and laughs once, almost silently. Then he closes the last of the distance between you and reaches up with his free hand to cup your cheek and leads you down into a kiss.

Somehow, you manage to get on the bed. It’s more difficult than it should be, with the way neither of you wants to pull away from the other. You follow where Emil leads, letting him pull you down onto the mattress, letting him position you over him.

It’s like it was in the dream, and for a moment you feel a burst of sick guilt. But it’s so hard to hold onto that when the moonlight illuminates Emil’s hair, spread across your sheets, your bed, and he parts his legs around you and pulls you down into a kiss. Your bare chest presses against his, and you shiver at how warm he is underneath you. You’re so hard, and he hasn’t even touched you. You want this so desperately, and you know you’ll do anything Emil asks of you right now.

So when he takes one of your hands and guides it down between your stomachs, you let him. Through his pants, you press your hand to his cock. You feel his unsteady, shuddering exhale against your mouth. He says something in Swedish you can’t understand, and you pause. You don’t think he’s telling you to stop, but still— Then more clearly, in Finnish, he says, _ “Please—” _

You can’t refuse him. You fumble one-handed with his waistband, push it down just low enough to take his cock in hand. The feeling of him and the way he arches up against you— You moan into his mouth, unable to silence yourself. But that’s nothing compared to Emil. With every movement of your hand against him, every shift of your fingers, you swallow the helpless little noises he makes. You kiss him and kiss him and feel the way he responds to your touch.

You’re so hard and you want him so badly that when he manages to reach one hand down between your legs, it’s almost too much. You break the kiss at the first brush of his fingers, and only just have time to collect yourself before he’s worked his way into your pants and is wrapping his hand around your cock. Your forehead rests on the sheets beside Emil’s head, and you’re breathing too hard, too ragged, you can’t control yourself, and it’s all so _ much. _

Still, you don’t lose track of what you’re doing. You don’t think this will last long. Emil is moving underneath you with too much urgency, and you brace yourself above him on one elbow and focus on him. You can feel dampness against your hand as you stroke him, and when your palm brushes across the head of his cock, he gasps and twists underneath you. 

You focus on that, every reaction he has to your touch, everything that makes him arch up against you and thrust into your grip. His hand is still holding you, but he isn’t managing to do much more than that. His head is thrown back on the sheets, and he’s breathing fast and uneven, and you bend low over him to kiss his throat and touch him as he gasps for air.

Emil comes with a sharp cry, and you can feel him spilling over your hand as you stroke him through it. He throws one one arm over his face but the other one slides around your waist, holding you close as he shakes underneath you. He’s still making small, quiet noises in the back of his throat, and you bend down for one moment to kiss his cheek before you pull back. You keep touching him, watching what you can see of his face and feeling the way he moves against you, looking for the moment when it becomes too much.

Finally he makes a noise that sounds more like distress than pleasure and twists away from your hand. You let him go immediately, and roll off him and onto your side, so that you’re lying beside him rather than pinning him against the sheets. And while he’s distracted, you pull up your pants again, tugging the waistband back up to your stomach. 

You continue to watch Emil, but it’s a few seconds before he moves. He stays there with his arm over his face, breathing hard. You can feel your chest going tight and painful, and your stomach knotting, but you fight to keep it under control. Just a few moments longer. Finally, he rolls over onto his side, laughs breathlessly and grins at you. Then he looks down at himself and makes a face.

“One moment,” he says. “Let me—”

He rolls over, and twists to lean out over the edge of the bed. After a moment he comes up brandishing his shirt. He wipes off his stomach, then takes your hand and cleans it too, one finger at a time. 

“I’ll wash… tomorrow,” he says, and tosses the shirt back over the side of the bed. 

By then you’re having to focus all your effort on keeping your breathing steady and your face calm. Emil hesitates for a second, looking at you, and for one awful moment you think he’s seen something. But he just ducks his head sheepishly and moves a little further towards you. Then inches even closer.

Ah. He doesn’t resist at all as you gather him up against your chest. It’s a relief. He lets you pull him in close to you and rest your chin on top of his head. He seems content. His forehead rests at the base of your neck, and one arm is curled between you. He slips the other arm over your waist and around you, so that his palm is pressed warm and reassuring against the back of your shoulder.

And then he freezes. You can feel it in him, and you freeze too at first, terrified, thinking frantically about what could be wrong, what happened— 

Emil’s voice is distressed when he says, “You didn’t— _ I _didn’t—”

You don’t understand for a moment. But then he moves the arm captured between you and you feel his fingers on your stomach, brushing against your waistband.

At first you don’t trust your voice and simply shake your head. But that isn’t enough. You need to say something. You manage to keep your voice steady when you tell him. “Don’t worry about it. I’m fine.”

He makes a doubtful noise and says, “I _ want _ to.”

A little more firmly, you repeat. “I’m fine.”

He doesn’t argue any further, which is fortunate, because the pressure in your chest is building and you’re quickly reaching the limits of your self-control.

This isn’t exactly a surprise. It isn’t new. But that means you’ve had time to get used to hiding it. You focus on your breathing, keeping it slow and even. The tears finally spill over, dripping over your nose and onto the pillow. But with Emil tucked against you, he doesn’t see that. You inhale and exhale at a measured, steady pace, refusing to let your breath catch the way it wants to. You blink and blink, trying to bring things to an end more quickly, but it doesn’t help. And although you manage to keep control of your lungs, you start shivering and you can’t figure out how to stop.

Emil does notice that. You can feel it when he does. You try not to tense, hoping you can brush this off somehow— But he only mumbles something in Swedish and reaches blindly around you to grab the edge of a blanket and pull it over the two of you. 

Once he’s done that, he burrows his face into your neck again. He wraps his arm back around you, pats your back, and sleepily says, “Better.” You don’t argue with him.

Emil falls asleep before you manage to stop crying. You’d expected that. What you hadn’t expected was that as you started to pull yourself back together, the full reality of what you’ve _ done _comes crashing in on you.

This is Lalli’s— How could you? There’s no excuse, no possible excuse. It was bad enough before. You can’t explain this. What are you supposed to say? That you wanted this and that was enough? That you _ forgot _that you shouldn’t?

You should be ashamed. You _ are _ ashamed. You’re cold in a way that has nothing to do with temperature, and it makes it so much worse that you don’t let go of Emil, even now, even when you’re fully aware of how out of line you are. You shouldn’t sleep with—you shouldn’t even _ look _at him in this way, but here you still are, half-naked and holding him close and feeling every slow, quiet breath he takes against your skin.

You don’t sleep. You can’t. You feel too sick to manage it, and you feel even worse when you realize that you might see Lalli in your dreams. How are you supposed to face him in the morning? You should— You should tell him this happened. You should leave. Immediately. You need to apologize to him, no matter how insufficient that apology is, and then you need to _ leave. _ You don’t know where you’ll go, but that’s not as important as it is to protect Lalli from— from you.


	4. Chapter 4

That night isn’t very restful. You doze off here and there, but never for long. It’s fine. You try to think of what you’ll… do. In the morning. If you go, you’ll have to leave the trunks behind, but you don’t need what’s in them. Lalli will be able to salvage whatever possessions he wants. 

It helps that you don’t have to worry about Lalli being alone— At least, you hope you don’t have to worry. Perhaps when you apologize, you can ask him to forgive Emil, then you’ll be more certain. It’s still tempting to slip away without a word to anyone. Even though you know it’s the coward’s way out, even though you  _ know  _ it was wrong to do that to Lalli once, never mind doing it again, especially under these circumstances. 

Emil sleeps peacefully, pressed up against your chest. Even when you drift off and jolt awake from unpleasant dreams, he doesn’t stir. His arm stays draped over your waist. Despite everything that’s happened, you remain painfully aware of the feeling of his bare skin against yours.

When you see the sky beginning to turn grey through the window, you try to extract yourself. You move Emil’s arm without much difficulty. You leave the blanket draped over him and edge backwards towards the side of the bed, and he sleepily protests, but his eyes remain closed and he doesn’t wake. Once you’re free, you roll onto your back and stare at the ceiling, considering what you should do.

But before you can come to a decision, Emil closes the distance between you again. As far as you can tell, he’s still more asleep than awake, but he curls forward so that his head is pillowed on your upper arm. His hand rests on top of yours, without any real intention. And despite everything, it’s still difficult to resist the temptation to wrap your fingers around his. You can feel your throat beginning to close, so you look away from Emil, to the other side of the room, and try to focus on your plans. It doesn’t help much. It’s hard to pay attention to your own thoughts when you can feel every breath Emil takes against your skin.

The sky continues to brighten, and you fail to leave the bed. Emil wakes up before you manage to force yourself into action. He blinks a few times turns, then groans and rolls forward onto his stomach, turning his face even further into your arm. He stays there for a moment, and you’re so tense you’ve frozen in place, waiting for him to say something, wondering if you ought to speak up first, or— 

Emil finally lifts his head and looks up at you. Then it’s his turn to freeze, and there’s enough light that you’re able to very clearly see his face go red. It gives you enough time to wonder— What if  _ he  _ decides this was all a horrible mistake? It stings to even consider. But still. It would be for the best, you think. He leaves of his own accord, you ask Lalli to forgive him,  _ and  _ you leave the country, and then hopefully they can recover. Heal.

But before you even complete that though, Emil smiles. It spreads slowly across his face, and he ducks his head a little to hide it, bumping his forehead up against your shoulder for a moment. His face is still red, and you can see the flush spreading down and out over his shoulders. And you can still see the smile. He gives up on hiding it after only a few seconds, and just looks at you instead, grinning openly. You feel cornered. You don’t want to leave, but your heart is still starting to pound and you feel trapped.

He moves and breaks the spell. He yawns, stretches extravagantly, and combs his fingers through his hair and pats it down, though it doesn’t have much effect. He asks, “What time is it?” But he doesn’t wait for an answer. “Do you mind, I shower first? And then—” He sits up. “From yesterday, berries. For breakfast? You shower, and I cook?”

He’s still smiling and you feel trapped, but now his attention is on the bedroom door, and it eases the tension in your chest just far enough that you manage speak to agree with his plan. You aren’t sure you properly heard what he said to you, but he’s waiting for an answer, you need to say  _ something.  _ He beams down at you, promises to shower quickly, and then hesitates. 

Before you have time to wonder what’s wrong, Emil bends over you, pauses again, and then kisses you. Just once, just a quick brush of his lips. After that he doesn’t quite pull away. But he’s watching you, looking for something, and you don’t know what it is, though you can see uncertainty in his face. You’re still struggling to catch up to what’s happening, still groggy from lack of sleep. You see his hair catching the light like a halo, just like last night, though now it’s much more tousled and sticking out at odd angles. Without thinking, you reach up and brush his hair back from his face.

Whatever he’s looking for, that seems to satisfy him. He repeats his plans for showers and breakfast as he climbs out of bed, collects his shirt from the floor, and makes his way from the room.

It’s only after the door shuts behind him that you think to picture him running into Lalli in the hall, and your blood freezes. It wakes you up, if nothing else. You don’t— You don’t hear anything from the hall. And after a minute, distantly, you hear the noise of the shower. So you assume it wasn’t an issue. But it just drives home that you need to take responsibility for your actions. You still haven’t decided how to do that. But it needs to happen. 

You stand in your room with your mind racing in useless circles until the sound of running water stops. You wait a few minutes longer, then force yourself to leave the room and make your way to the shower. The door to Lalli’s room is still shut, though you can hear faint noises coming from the common area. Emil, you assume. Hope. The heat of the shower is soothing, at least. You can just stand there and let the water wash over you and drown out the outside world, let it go on and on until the water starts to run cold.

You dress slowly, but there’s only so long you can delay. When you finally drag yourself out into the kitchen, only Emil is there. There’s a pot of porridge on the stove, and he’s humming to himself as he rinses berries in the sink. He smiles again when he sees you, and perhaps eventually you’ll manage not to flinch when he does that. 

Carefully, you sit in a chair and hope that he’s too busy to want conversation. You ought to know him better by now. He immediately begins to make small talk, but when you respond to his first few questions with monosyllables, he turns around to peer at you, nods sympathetically, and says, “Tired?” 

“Mmh.”

It’s enough. He goes back to humming as he finishes preparing the meal. It’s a short reprieve. It isn’t much longer before he ferries two bowls of porridge and a larger bowl of berries to the table. You can’t help a look back towards the bedrooms. Emil follows your gaze, then shrugs and grins. He says, “He eats… later?”

But it’s as though those words summoned Lalli. Emil has only just sat down when Lalli comes shuffling out and drifts over to the table. Your stomach has knotted horribly tight and you feel too paralyzed to even breathe, but neither of the others seem to notice. Lalli just drapes himself over Emil, resting his chin on top of Emil’s head and blinking sleepily down at the table.

Emil slips out from under him, and wastes no time in shooing Lalli down into that same chair. He pushes the porridge and the berries his way, then goes back to the stove to get another bowl for himself. You’re still frozen waiting for— something. Lalli is oblivious. He spoons berries into his porridge until his bowl is almost overflowing, then shoves them in your direction. Mechanically, you manage to serve yourself, and finish just in time to hand the bowl to Emil as he settles back at the table with his food.

Lalli wakes up as he eats, and he and Emil talk to each other. It covers the way your throat is still locked so tightly shut it’s a struggle to swallow, never mind speak. Every moment, you’re waiting for the truth to come out. You’re petrified, but you know it has to happen. Except somehow, it doesn’t. They’re perfectly relaxed together, making easy conversation. Lalli pauses to add more berries to his porridge and Emil sighs and scolds him, tells him that fresh fruit is expensive, all while he keeps idly pulling berries from the bowl and eating them. 

You don’t understand. It’s like last night never happened. It’s horribly tempting to go along with it, to pretend it wasn’t real. You can’t do that. Lalli doesn’t deserve that. He hasn’t deserved any of this. You still don’t have an explanation, but you need to take responsibility for your actions. You collect up the dishes once the others are done eating and bring them to the sink to wash, so that they can’t see your face, just for a few minutes longer.

But you think Lalli might have guessed that something is wrong. When you turn back around, he’s watching you. He keeps watching you, even while he keeps talking to Emil. And when Emil heads to the door and takes two jackets from the closet and holds out one towards Lalli, Lalli waves him off. Emil hesitates, makes a face, and says something. They’re talking in Swedish. You don’t know what errand Emil is headed out for, but it’s easy enough to tell that Lalli had been planning to go with him, until something changed. Lalli hasn’t looked away from you yet.

You focus on breathing and steeling yourself for the conversation you need to have. A part of you wishes you could understand Swedish, but the rest of you flinches from knowing what they’re discussing right now. Lalli doesn’t look alarmed. That’s your only reassurance. It would be easier in some ways—many ways—to have the decision taken out of your hands, to not have to find a way to tell Lalli about this. But he deserves better.

When Emil leaves, there’s silence. Lalli curls up in his chair and watches you as you finish cleaning up the remnants of breakfast. You stare at the pot as you scrub it, delaying the conversation, knowing it will do you no good.

It has to happen. But you’re weak. Instead of simply telling him the worst ways you’ve failed him, you approach the subject indirectly. “Perhaps I should leave Iceland.”

From the corner of your eye, you see Lalli freeze. There’s silence for a moment, and then he slowly says, “...with us.”

You take a slow breath and try to keep your voice level. “By myself.”

The chair scrapes across the floor as he shoves to his feet. “No.”

“Lalli—” 

_ “No.” _

You need to explain. He’ll understand once he knows why. He’ll  _ want  _ you to go once he knows what you’ve done. But you look at him standing there now, with his hands in fists at his sides, furious— _ frightened, _ you realize—and it’s so difficult to say the words. 

You have to fight the urge to turn away from him, to make this easier for yourself. After a slow breath, you manage, “You don’t need me here.”

He just hisses and crosses his arms tightly across his chest. 

“You have friends here,” you press. “You’ll be fine. You can go with Emil to Norway. Or have him bring you to Sweden. I’m sure you can find work there.”

He shifts, turning his face away from you. “You don’t understand  _ anything. _ ”

“Lalli—” 

“I said no! If you leave, we’re going with you.” More bitterly, he adds, “I’m ready if you sneak away this time.”

Your heart twists. You should apologize, you  _ want  _ to apologize, but you know it won’t mean anything after what you’ve just told him, never mind after— after everything else. 

“I don’t… belong here,” you try. “You and Emil belong together. I belong to—” 

“You can belong to the forest from  _ here, _ ” he says. You can’t tell if you’re imagining the note of pleading in his voice. You don’t know if it’s really there or if it’s just you, if you’re that desperate for him to want you here with him, despite all the ways you know you’ve betrayed his trust.

You have to swallow hard before you can speak, but even then, your voice isn’t as steady as you would wish. “You don’t need me.”

He doesn’t respond, but denial is written in every line of his body.

Your eyes burn dangerously no matter how you blink. This is— a complete failure. You haven’t even gotten close to telling him the full truth, and it’s already a disaster.

“Lalli—” 

“I’m not listening,” he interrupts. And before you can go on, he covers his ears with both hands. He doesn’t make a move to leave, but he isn’t looking at you either, only glaring across the room at the far wall. 

You take several slow, deep breaths and try to recenter yourself. He’s asked you to stop pushing. You ought to have enough self-control to at least manage that. Locking yourself away in your room sounds tempting right now, but you shouldn’t do that either. If Lalli isn’t shutting himself away, the conversation isn’t necessarily over. You just need to wait until he’s ready to resume it on his own terms.

So you need to stay accessible. You doubt he’s in any mood to be brought on errands, and you’re certain he wouldn’t take it well if you left on your own right now. You could find a book to read. But the spinning wheel catches your eyes, and— yes. You need that. Solitude isn’t an option, but this sort of meditative work sounds almost equally appealing at the moment.

Lalli drops his hands from his ears as soon as you cross the room to the spinning wheel. When he follows behind you and curls up in an armchair, you know you made the right choice. You do your best to ignore him and give him space while you arrange your things around you. You’re a bit surprised to see how much yarn you’ve accumulated in such a short time, even though you know you’ve hardly done anything except spin since you arrived.

The work calms you. It doesn’t push everything back entirely. But needing to devote your focus to the spinning helps settle you, and it’s only a few minutes before you feel able to resume the conversation. Your chest is still a hollow pit, but the panic, at least— that has ebbed. You focus on the spinning wheel as you work, trying not to watch Lalli too closely.

It’s perhaps fifteen minutes later when Lalli uncurls slightly and says, “I don’t care why you think you should go. But if you leave, we’re going with you.”

You hold your focus on your hands, on the spinning. You’re able to keep your emotions better controlled this time. Your voice is steady when you say, “We?”

At the edge of your vision, you see Lalli shrug. “Me. Emil will want to come. And Reynir too, probably.”

You control your breathing. “Don’t you like it in Iceland?”

“Don’t you?” His voice is sharp. Then you hear him sigh, and he speaks much more quietly when he adds, “Stop doing that.”

“What if it matters, why I think I should leave?”

He snorts. “What if you just lie to me, and tell me whatever it takes to get the job done?”

It strikes you like a blow, and you flinch, your hands faltering. After a few seconds, you manage to say, “I deserve that.”

“Mnh.” Lalli looks away, off across the house, but he doesn’t say anything else for a long moment. Eventually he adds. “I don’t care why. I don’t want to hear why. And I don’t want you to go.”

Your whole chest aches and you struggle to breathe. You’re barely seeing your own hands, right in front of your face. You need to say something, you know you do. You hardly know where to begin, with any of this. “I don’t want to lie to you.”

“Hmh.”

You ought to stop spinning. Your hands aren’t steady enough. But if you set the wheel aside, you’ll have to look at Lalli directly, and you don’t know if you can do that right now. You haven’t lied to him, not about this. But you’d argue that what you’re doing is just as wrong.

After a minute, he says, “You don’t have to stay in Iceland. But if you leave, we’re coming too.”

You don’t know how much harder you can push before Lalli shuts down, but you can’t just— leave it there. It feels worse than a lie to let him believe things are that simple. You stop the spinning wheel and take a slow breath, centering yourself. “I don’t want to come between you and Emil.”

When Lalli doesn’t answer, you force yourself to look at him. He’s staring at you, and more than anything else— he looks completely baffled. You only hold his gaze for a moment before he shakes his head, frowning, and says, “Don’t be stupid.”

“Lalli—”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” He gets to his feet, and at first you’re expecting him to leave, but instead he moves over towards the couch. He isn’t looking at you anymore. Instead, he’s frowning down at the skeins of yarn you have scattered over the cushions. “If you want to go somewhere else, just tell me. We can go.”

You can’t respond to that. You don’t know how. He’s started poking through the yarn, but you’re frozen, desperately casting around for some way to explain to Lalli why he shouldn’t go with you. 

Before you can find something to say, he picks one skein out of the pile, letting his fingers sink into the yarn. He doesn’t say anything, but you see his mouth twitch upward before he sets it back down again. He picks up another skein and turns it thoughtfully over in his hands. Then he notices you watching him and frowns at you again. “We’re not talking about it.”

You’ll come back to it later. You’ll tell him later. It’s a cowardly decision. It’s part of the same pattern that brought you to this point to begin with. Your stomach twists with shame and guilt, but you sit there and watch Lalli sort through your yarn. You don’t manage to say anything, but you do turn to take a few stray skeins from the end table and add them to the others.

There’s silence for a while. Lalli doesn’t seem to feel the need to speak, and you’re at a loss for what to say. The guilt doesn’t— subside. But it gets pushed to the edges of your mind as you try to keep track of which yarns Lalli likes best and which won’t work at all. He isn’t sorting them according to any system you can discern, and you know from long experience that if you ask him directly which ones he likes best, he’ll just shrug and avoid answering. 

You think he’s gravitating towards the combed wool. That’s not too much of a surprise, though it’s always worth checking with him, before you realize you’ve knitted half a sweater he’ll never be able to wear. He does like the yarn you spun from Reynir’s rolags too, though you don’t think there’s anything else here he likes that would match that texture well. You’ll save that for a future project. 

After a certain point, you start sorting the yarn yourself, moving the yarns that haven’t passed muster over to the end table, watching him go over the remainder. You set the ones that seem to be his favorites off towards one side.

He comes back to the single skein of Swedish lamb wool several times, but you don’t want to think about how expensive it would be to buy enough of that for a sweater. Still, you mentally mark that out for a pair of socks, once the weather starts to turn. There’s more variety in fine wools here than there ever was in Keuruu, and you should try to take advantage of that before you leave— 

You realize your own train of thought, and the shame hits you again. Yes, you’ll just stay here and make sweaters, like nothing ever happened. You need to stay long enough to tell Lalli. After that argument, you know you can’t leave him without an explanation. But after that— 

Lalli interrupts your thoughts. “You have a lot of yarn.”

“Yes.”

He hums thoughtfully, threading his fingers into the lamb wool. “More than one sweater of yarn.”

Ah. “You’d like me to make Emil a sweater.”

He only shrugs. But you already know the answer, which is why it wasn’t a question.

You take a breath and let it out slowly, trying to think through what patterns you have with you, which ones you’re most familiar with. Without a job to occupy your time, you’ve been spending most of your days on this sort of thing anyways. You’ll be able to make a sweater—two sweaters—quickly. Then you’ll tell him. The delay is selfish, you know that. And the gifts won’t be an apology. But they’ll be something. You can sing health and protection into the knitting, and when he agrees it’s best for you to go, it will be something you can leave for him.

Lalli is watching you, you realize. You wait, but he doesn’t speak, so you finally ask, “What is it?”

“You’ll make two sweaters?” He glances down at the yarn again. “You could probably make three.”

“I’ll make two.” You don’t need any more clothing. And you’re already delaying this more than you should. 

“You’re sure?”

You try not to sigh. “I’m sure.”

He shrugs and makes a noncommittal noise, but as you watch him, he seems satisfied enough. And he hasn’t put the lamb wool down yet. Maybe— Maybe you can do two sweaters and a pair of socks. Perhaps.

At least you can pick out the yarn for the sweaters. Most of your wool is undyed, and you don’t want to buy dying supplies yourself, but you have enough other yarn to add a second color to both sweaters. Dark green for Lalli, you think. Then for Emil— there’s a deep blue that catches your eye. It should stand out well against the white. And it will complement Lalli’s sweater well. That decides it, then. They’ll make a nice matched pair.

Once that’s settled and you pile the rest of your yarn off to the side, you have every intention of beginning the sweaters there and then. Lalli is perched on the far end of the couch, watching you, still holding the lamb wool. You really will need to make those socks for him. And now that the argument with Lalli is over—paused—you’re left drained and exhausted. Some of that is the restless night catching up to you, you’re certain. But you still feel sick with stress, and it’s so difficult to contemplate even just getting up to go to your room to fetch supplies.

You only mean to close your eyes for a moment. You’re certain you fail, simply on the basis of how rested you feel when you open them again. 

There are voices, you realize, and your stomach clenches. When you turn your head, you can see Emil and Lalli sitting at the kitchen table, speaking quietly, their heads leaned close together. You still feel half-asleep, and blink twice, trying to wake up the rest of the way.

You’ve barely moved, but Lalli still hisses and sits up straight. He holds up a hand in front of Emil’s face and says, “Onni.”

For a moment you’re braced for disaster. But Emil only smiles and waves. You see Lalli sigh and roll his eyes, then lean back in towards Emil again. He begins talking, quietly enough you’re not sure what language it is. You’re not sure you want to know what language it is. You don’t want to know what they’re talking about. Instead, you shut your eyes and doze, drifting in and out of your forest. You must have been exhausted, if you don’t even remember being asleep before. Every so often, you can hear the murmur of voices, but it’s completely indistinct.

You’re vaguely embarrassed when you wake up again to the smell of dinner cooking. That was— practically the entire day. Lalli is situated in his favorite armchair again, with a mug of tea and a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, and you can hear the sound of rain outside. You sit upright, wincing as your neck twinges. You’re going to regret that.

Lalli is watching you as he sips his tea. You ask him, “You didn’t wake me up?”

He shrugs. “You were tired.” Then he gestures over toward the table. “I made Emil get fresh bread, before the rain started.”

Your whole back protests when you stand up, not just your neck. You still manage to make your way over towards the kitchen and sit heavily in a chair. You’re still blinking sleepily at the table when suddenly Emil is there, sliding a plate in front of you.

You freeze. You don’t think either of them notice, but you feel painfully exposed. Emil is humming to himself as he turns back to the counter and grabs a few more items. “Bröd, smör, honung,” he mutters to himself, setting several dishes on the table one after another while you’re still fighting to force yourself into motion. He turns to Lalli, “Sylt? Um. Ah… marmelad?”

“Hillo,” Lalli says, absently. “Yes.”

You pull the largest dish close enough to see it’s filled with bread rolls, and in that time, Emil’s already gone back to the counter and returned with a jar of jam. 

“Hillo!” he announces, beaming, as he sets it in front of you. 

You mostly manage not to wince. You’re still too silent, too unresponsive, still struggling to catch up. You ought to be saying something, even just to thank him, but the words won’t come. But it doesn’t seem to matter. Emil’s smile doesn’t fade at all as he steps back from the table and returns to the stove. 

You cut your roll in two and butter each half, then drizzle them with honey. The sweetness makes you feel a little more alert, and you have to focus on what you’re doing, trying not to let the honey drip down onto your fingers. Lalli joins you as you’re finishing. He takes a roll of his own, then pushes the bread back towards you.

For you, it’s an uncomfortable evening. You’re wound so tight you feel like the lightest touch will shatter you. But for the other two, nothing seems wrong. Through conversation, through dinner, they act like this is any other evening. 

Emil and Lalli go to sleep before you do. You feel too restless to lie down, though you have nothing to keep you occupied. When you give up and go to your room for the night, it’s impossible to miss that Lalli has left his bedroom door open. You sigh, but you can’t blame him. You’re not planning to slip away when he isn’t looking. You had— There were  _ reasons  _ for why you did it before. But even if you try to explain now, you haven’t exactly given him any reason to believe you.

Instead, you go to bed and do your best to sleep. Your dreams are quiet. For a while you wonder whether Lalli will want to come spend the night, or if he’d rather avoid you for now. And you worry that this is a night Reynir will want to be sociable. You carefully avoid thinking about Emil. But as the time passes and nobody arrives, you let yourself relax. You find a place to sit, in the middle of the woods, leaned against a tree trunk, where the light is dim and the rustle of wind through the leaves and branches makes for soothing background noise.

That morning, you’re barely given time to wake up before it’s made clear you won’t have the day to yourself. As soon as you come out into the common area, you see Reynir, who looks noticeably sheepish as he says he thought maybe today would be a nice day to visit the hot spring again. You might believe this was really the impulse of the moment if it wasn’t for the way Lalli squints suspiciously at you from across the kitchen table until you agree to go on the outing. 

In case you had any doubts about the reason for the excursion, Lalli makes a point of telling you that tomorrow he wants you to help him with errands in town. You quietly resign yourself to a lack of privacy for the next several days, or however long it takes him to believe you won’t leave the moment he turns his back. You can’t expect him to trust your words, so at least you can give him this much. 

Reynir and Emil must have noticed that something is wrong, from Lalli’s reactions if not yours. Mercifully, neither of them asks you about it. You don’t know what you’d tell them. If they ask Lalli about what’s happening, they do it where you can’t hear.

The only other consolation is that Emil maintains his distance. Not… obviously so. He’s still as friendly as ever. Still as determined to talk to everyone, including you, regardless of what language barriers might be standing in his way. But he doesn’t try to touch you. He doesn’t try to kiss you. It’s a relief; it makes it easier to repress the urge to flinch whenever he comes near you. But you’re ashamed to realize that it’s also— a disappointment.

You push those feelings down and do your best to ignore them.

A more difficult thing to push aside is the guilt as days pass and you fail to begin the sweaters. You might blame Lalli, for keeping you more busy than you’ve been since your arrival. Or you might make the excuse that Emil distracts you asking questions about how to speak Finnish, or that Reynir spends too much time at your home and it would be rude to ignore him— It’s immaterial. You know you can only blame yourself. You could have easily begun these sweaters the day you decided to make them.

The main remaining difficulty is that you need to have a pattern before you begin your work. You could do a simple, unpatterned sweater from memory, you think. But they deserve better than  _ that.  _ And that means you don’t know what to cast on, you don’t know what gauge you need, none of it. It should be… so simple. You know that, but you still don’t start. You have pattern books, you even think you know what patterns you’d like to use. But those books are still buried somewhere in your trunks. 

When y ou catch yourself considering shopping for new pattern books for the sweaters instead of finding the ones you already own, you realize you’re being ridiculous and that this needs to stop. The trunks should have been unpacked when you arrived. You know you’re putting this off without a good reason. Even apart from the sweaters, the house is still nearly bare, and you  _ have  _ things that would be useful, they’re just… buried. Lalli has retrieved some books for Emil to read, and every so often he goes rummaging looking for something of his, but you have more possessions that are going to waste. 

You know that after that first attempt, you’re just— reluctant. To go through your sister’s things. It isn’t that seeing them will make everything more real. It’s already real enough. But you still can’t bring yourself to do it. You find little excuse after little excuse to put it off, even though you can tell that’s what you’re doing. 

It doesn’t happen until there’s a dreary, wet afternoon, where it’s raining just hard enough to make it unpleasant to go outside. You own at least one umbrella. You  _ know  _ you do. It’s just buried in one of the trunks. Where it’s doing you no good at all.

You’ve been drifting from task to task without accomplishing much at all. Lalli is curled up on the couch, watching the rain through the window. Emil has been having a quiet, largely one-sided conversation with him, but as you leave the main room, you see Lalli reach out and shove lightly at the back of Emil’s head. You don’t think much of it until you hear steps behind you and look back see Emil following you down the hall. You suppose Lalli must have wanted a break. At least Emil doesn’t look displeased.

You hadn’t really expected company for this. You aren’t sure if it will be better or worse this way. But it’s fine. Emil is talking to you as you make your way to your room and do your best to to brace yourself. He cheerfully helps you pull the trunks away from the walls, still carrying on the conversation with no real input from you. You aren’t sure how much you hear of what he’s saying. Your chest already feels too tight, and you haven’t even properly begun.

Delaying won’t make this any easier. You take a deep breath and open the first trunk. 

Even though you’re ready for it, it’s still— difficult. This trunk still has the neatly folded stack of Tuuri’s clothing just under the top edge. Further down, you can see books that you know are—were—hers. There’s more, but you have to pause and blink several times before you trust yourself to go on.

To Emil’s credit, he realizes quickly that something is off. He goes silent and moves up behind you, looking over your shoulder. Quietly, he says, “Tuuri’s?”

You nod once. You force yourself to reach out and pick up the clothing. A thick sweater slips out of your grip as you lift the rest. You recognize your own work and have to shut your eyes for a moment before you can speak. “I stored her things for her. After she left.”

Your throat is closed too tightly to say any more, but Emil doesn’t press you any further. He takes the stack of clothing from your hands and sets it on the cabinet so you can pick up and refold the sweater. There are a few of those. Below that, there are hats, gloves, boots. A large coat she spent years insisting she would grow into before she quietly dropped the subject. After you take that all out of the trunk, there are still trinkets, bits of jewelry. Books and notebooks. You remember, abruptly, that one of these trunks has your oldest family photographs. Three of them, one from each of the emergency bags your parents had ready for you. Two of your parents, one of Aunt Tuulikki and Uncle Juha. And— You need to stop. You can’t handle seeing your parents right now, after everything. You just— can’t.

You’re still looking into the trunk, but aren’t seeing much of anything. You try to breathe quietly and evenly and blink the burning out of your eyes. Emil shifts behind you, and for a moment you’re afraid he’s going to touch you.

But he only says, softly, “Can I help? With— these?” 

It takes you a moment to understand. But when you lift your head, you can see him half-reaching for the stacks of clothing. 

This is something you can focus on. You take a breath and close your eyes. “Please.”

It’s an effective distraction. Emil has plenty of questions about what you want to do, which he struggles to put into Finnish, and which you aren’t at all sure he phrases accurately. You don’t manage to give him decent answers, but he seems content sorting the clothing into piles by some system of his own. 

It takes you a moment to push past sentimentality, but after a brief internal struggle, you look over at the stacks of clothing and say, “I don’t need to keep these.”

Emil pauses, “Everything? Or, ah… you keep none?”

“None of it.” 

Emil hesitates at first, but when you don’t say anything more, he starts sorting even more vigorously, arranging the clothing by type, with a running commentary that manages to be less comprehensible than the questions. You catch just enough that you  _ think _ he’s talking about other residents he’s met in the town. You’re almost certain you hear him say, ‘Reynir’s aunt—’ so perhaps he’s talking about people to pass Tuuri’s things on to. That’s fine. Knowing that her clothes could be of use to someone is better than throwing them away.

The sweaters you knitted for Tuuri do give him pause. When he picks up the first one, he turns to you, but you don’t know what he’s looking for, so you don’t say anything. He arranges those sweaters in their own pile, and after everything else is sorted to his satisfaction, he puts a hand on the stack of sweaters and looks to you again.

“You… made?”

“Yes.”

He hesitates there again, but you don’t know what he’s waiting for. After a few seconds of silence he says, “These too, you don’t keep?”

You start to say no, but stop. There’s magic knitted into them, just like the sweaters you’re making now. You made them too long ago to remember what spells you sang, even what gods you had prayed to. But it’ll be magic for protection of some kind. Lalli has all the clothing you’ve made him over the years and knows how to take care of himself, but he never had much patience for mage work without immediate, practical applications. And Emil is dear to him.

Your chest aches, and you exhale slowly. Finally, you say, “Keep them yourself, if you’d like. I don’t need them.” He’s taller than Tuuri, and thinner, but at least some of the sweaters should fit him.

Emil is surprised, and you have to repeat the offer before he’s certain he understood correctly. He thanks you, several times, and you’re grateful he doesn’t smile as he does so. After that’s done, he doesn’t say anything more, and the silence makes it easier to keep yourself centered. Just— seeing these things is difficult enough. He starts ferrying the sweaters and Tuuri’s other clothing away from your cabinet and out into the hall. From the sound of it, he’s taking them to his own room. 

You’re grateful. And you take the opportunity to collect yourself, pull yourself back under control. You reach into the trunk again and push Tuuri’s books off to one side. At least the ones Lalli hasn’t already taken for Emil. Your pattern books aren’t in here, but there are other things that are worth unpacking. More particularly, most of the rest of the trunk is occupied by a folded pile of furs.

By the time Emil is done moving clothing, you’ve taken all the furs from this trunk and have moved on to the next. You’re already remembering other furs that you haven’t unearthed yet. You’d forgotten you had so many. Some of these were from Lalli, animals he hunted on patrol and brought back to you at Keuruu. Those you treated and cured yourself. And then there were the furs that Lalli traded the other scouts for, or that you bought yourself from trading ships that docked at the base. Or that Tuuri bought as gifts for you. There wasn’t much to spend money on in Keuruu, and the furs were at least a purchase that you could use in practical ways. You find your pattern books eventually, but keep unpacking your furs as well, piling them all on the bed.

There are hats in here. A pair of gloves with fur cuffs. A large moose skin that you used as a rug in Keuruu. You pull out a nearly-finished hood that had been meant for Tuuri, and your chest twinges. It’s fine. You can see if Lalli needs it instead. Or Emil. And there are blankets too. It’s strange, to see them now, and think how long it took you to get the furs to finish each of these. You find the seams in the blankets with your fingers, and even though you made them yourself, it’s still strange to feel how small each skin is compared to the size of the finished blanket. But you were at Keuruu for more than eleven years. 

As you unfold the blankets now, you can see the difference in quality between your earlier efforts and your later ones. Still. For the moment, you continue laying them all out on the bed, larger things stacked in the middle, and smaller things piled beside your pillows. You can decide which of these you want to use later, but it’s strange how after just this much, the room already looks more familiar to you, less like you’re living in someone else’s home.

Though you hadn’t realized until now just how  _ much  _ there was. Emil wanders back in while you’re contemplating it all. You watch him from the corner of your eye while you sort through everything. Some of these other furs were meant for clothing, and some hadn’t been meant for anything in particular. And you’re sure you had planned projects that you’re forgetting now. It’s been a long time since you took stock of what you owned. And even if Lalli can’t be persuaded to take any more, that doesn’t mean all of these were even  _ yours  _ to begin with. 

Emil is looking at the pile of furs on the bed. He reaches out to touch one, running just the tips of his fingers along it. He says, “Finland, ah— Hm. No sheets?”

“Sometimes sheets,” you tell him. “But I like furs.” Lalli has left the sheets on his bed, even if you don’t think he’s using them. He has the quilt in there, and the last blanket you knitted him. And you know he’s scattered other blankets around the house. Unless Emil wants some furs for his own room, you think you’ll keep all of these. And you’ll leave the bed sheets in place, even if you just sleep on top of them. That seems easiest. 

Though— The room and bed are larger than anything you had in Keuruu, but your bed is already piled high with furs and you’re still unpacking more. You aren’t sure if you should plan to keep all of them or if you should be looking for a way to sell some. Perhaps Lalli had the right idea after all, distributing his blankets all across the house. You’re running through your mental inventory, wondering which of your furs would be best to offer to Emil, when he speaks up again.

He says, “Different.”

“What?” You turn to look at him more fully. 

He’s still looking at the furs, turning over the ones on top to see the others buried underneath them. “Um. Unusual? What’s a word—?  _ Strange. _ Very strange, maybe.”

At first, all you can do is stare. You don’t know what to say to that. Emil looks up at you, and whatever he sees, his cheeks go pink and he straightens up, lifting his hands. “Not bad! Only—” He gestures down at the furs. “These… are being dirty?”

“Mmh.” You turn away from Emil. You don’t want to look at him right now. You don’t want him to be looking at you. It’s like all the air has been knocked out of your lungs. You feel like an idiot. At least you didn’t get as far as offering him any of the furs. This is already— enough. 

He lingers in your room, even though you aren’t making an effort to be a welcoming host. He sits on the edge of your bed and says things to you, but you’re only half-hearing him and you reply with monosyllables more than with words. You’re folding and refolding clothing and cloth and furs, and you’re re-organizing the same trunk you just finished organizing in the first place, but you can’t bring yourself to find something else to do right now.

Emil still tries to talk to you, but you aren’t helping him, and the one-sided conversation eventually falters and dies. You catch an accidental glimpse of his face, and regret it. He looks confused, and perhaps a bit hurt. You don’t know what to do about that right now. You do your best to stay facing away from him, and your shoulders are so tense they ache, waiting for— for something. For something that doesn’t come. 

Instead, after one silence has dragged out for several uncomfortable minutes, you hear Emil stand and quietly make his way from your room. He shuts the door behind him as he goes.

As soon as he’s gone, you take the nearest trunk and empty it. You leave fabric and clothes in a pile on the floor. And then you take the top fur on your bed, fold it, and tuck it into the bottom of the trunk. Then the second. After the blankets, you put away the other furs. It takes some time. You fill the first trunk and have to make space in another. But eventually it’s done, and the bed sits as it was before, nearly bare, with just its original pillows and sheets. 

You make an effort to begin setting out your other things. Your heart isn’t in it. You put the books—Tuuri’s books—on a shelf, because they make the trunks too heavy to carry on your own. You set your pattern books to the side. You take out the few pieces of your summer clothing. And then you don’t know what else you want. You take the things you dumped on the floor and shove them unceremoniously into another trunk. When you look around the room, it looks almost as bare as it did before you decided to unpack your belongings. You can tell your jaw is clenched too tight, but you can’t relax it. And you feel the beginnings of a headache.

When Lalli bursts into your room, it doesn’t help your mood. It doesn’t make things any better when Emil slinks through the door behind him. 

You close your eyes and take a deep, slow breath so that you don’t snap at either of them. But when you exhale and look at them again, you realize that Emil doesn’t look happy either. His shoulders are hunched and his hands shoved in his pockets, and he looks everywhere in the room except at you, with an expression seems more guilty than anything else.

Lalli is the first of you to make a move. He looks between you and Emil and says, “You’re both being so  _ stupid!” _

Emil mumbles something in Swedish, but stops when Lalli jabs one elbow into his side. You don’t respond at all. You don’t know what to say. But the longer the silence lasts, the more impatient Lalli looks. 

He finally hisses and rolls his eyes. “You!” He points at Emil. “Tell me what you are.”

“Lalli—” 

_ “No. _ We went over this. Tell me what you are.”

Emil groans. “I’m… bad at Finnish.”

Lalli nods. “Exactly.” He turns to face you. “Onni. What is Emil?”

You hesitate, but Lalli folds his arms and glares, and you can tell what he’s waiting for you to say. “Bad at Finnish.”

“There!”

Emil mutters, “I’m good at  _ hearing _ Finnish. Not good at  _ speaking.” _

Lalli waves one hand dismissively. “Doesn’t matter. Now, Emil. What did you say to Onni?”

You catch yourself frowning before you can help yourself. You don’t really want to hear this again. But Emil doesn’t look any more pleased than you. He shoots you one unhappy look and bends down to whisper something to Lalli.

Lalli just brushes him off and addresses you instead.  _ “Fine.  _ Onni, what did Emil say to you?”

“Mnh.” You cross your arms and turn away. You’re even less interested in repeating what he said than you are in hearing it again.

You hear Lalli heave a sigh. “You’re both being  _ idiots.” _

There are footsteps behind you, and you look back just in time to see Lalli moving forward to grab your sleeve, with Emil in tow. Once he has your attention, he tells you, “Emil  _ means _ that the furs are  _ different  _ from what he had in Sweden. And that sleeping on them will get the  _ furs _ dirty. Yes?”

_ “Yes,” _ Emil says, “Isn’t that what I—?”

Lalli sharply tugs Emil’s sleeve.  _ “No.  _ What are you bad at?”

“...Finnish.”

“Very good.” Lalli lets go of Emil’s sleeve and pats him twice on top of his head. Then he turns to you. He releases your sleeve, but thankfully doesn’t make any move to pat your head as well. He just stares you right in the eyes and says,  _ “See?” _

After that, you’re frozen. You don’t know what to say. Lalli doesn’t seem to care. He just looks between you and Emil once more, then sighs, rolls his shoulders back, and says, “This is so much easier when you try not to be stupid.”

Before you can find a reply to that, he’s gone. It’s just you and Emil looking wordlessly at each other.

After a moment, Emil glances away, clears his throat, and sidles over to your bed. He sits where he was before, perched on the edge of the mattress. His voice is quiet when he says, “Sorry?”

“It’s fine,” you say, automatically.

He makes a bit of a face, but doesn’t push the point. He looks over at the trunks lined up against the wall and tentatively says, “Furs?”

You turn slightly away. “Hmh.”

“I like them,” he adds. “Very— pretty?”

It still takes you several days to offer him one. Even once you decide you’re going to do it, you can’t settle on which of them would be best. You’re torn between two pieced blankets, one of beaver fur, one of rabbit. For a little while, being unable to choose is a tempting excuse not to give Emil one after all, but you know that reasoning is foolish. But offering him both would be… too much, you think. 

In the end, you remember what Lalli told you. ‘Emil likes soft things.’ The guard hairs in beaver fur are just a little more coarse than they are for rabbits. So that settles it.

You can’t tell if it’s the  _ best _ choice, but it’s… a good choice. When you offer him the blanket, Emil tries to protest, but it’s obvious that his heart isn’t in it. You only have to repeat the offer once before he accepts. And then his thanks are— effusive. He doesn’t say that much, his Finnish isn’t that good, but there’s something about the way he gestures trying to get his point across and the way he beams at you— 

Your cheeks are hot by the time Emil is done trying to express himself. You don’t think he can see that. You hope he can’t. After he’s run out of words and is left with smiles, he looks down at the blanket in his arms, hesitates for a moment, and buries his face in the fur. Even muffled, you can hear the way he sighs happily, and your stomach twists with aimless, directionless guilt.

Despite that, you still have more furs than you need. You try to suggest to Lalli that he take some, but he just makes noncommittal noises and says he already has everything that he needs. He tells you that while wearing a sweater and socks that you made him, while also wrapped in a blanket you made, so you don’t have much leverage to argue your point. The best concession you get from him is that once the weather gets colder, maybe he’ll want something more.

You have that conversation while Lalli sits curled in his favorite armchair so that the blanket covers him from chin to toes, watching you prepare dinner. After a minute of silence, he adds, “If you have too many things, you should make Emil take some.”

He isn’t wrong. But hearing it out loud, from him, brings back that creeping sense of guilt. You just say, “Mm,” and continue dicing vegetables.

The sweaters are a distraction. A helpful distraction in some ways, but a dangerous one in others. You’ve selected a pair of patterns that go well together, ones that you actually made as a matched set once before, as gifts when Lalli and Tuuri finished their apprenticeships. They outgrew those years ago, and you think it’s time to make them again. 

You start with Lalli’s sweater, since you’re used to sizing things for him. Then you should be back in practice when you begin Emil’s. You cast on both sleeves and begin with the green yarn. It’s relaxing work, even more than the spinning was. You work magic into the knitting as you go, quietly singing runo for health, for protection, and for safety, and you quickly find your rhythm. The green goes some distance up the arms before the colorwork begins, and by the time you add the white yarn, the work you have on your needles is recognizable as two half-knitted sleeves.

Lalli has seen this before. Apart from the magic, it isn’t a novelty for Reynir either. Emil is  _ fascinated.  _ On the days he spends in the house, he takes to sitting on the couch while you knit. Nominally, he’s sitting there to read, but he might read faster if he spent less of his time watching you work.

You don’t mind. You couldn’t have made it through a childhood with Lalli if you couldn’t deal with a little staring. And you’d be reluctant to call it a distraction when it doesn’t interfere with your work, but it does mean that you are constantly aware of Emil’s presence and attention.

It makes you a convenient resource for him as well. When he has questions about what he’s reading, he only has to lean over and show you the Finnish, and you can give him whatever help he needs. You’re limited by having almost no Swedish compared to Lalli, but you think you’re more patient with explanations than Lalli is, which isn’t entirely a surprise.

The routine becomes comfortable so quickly. It becomes harder and harder to remember— You still haven’t told Lalli about what you’ve done. And spending time sitting at opposite ends of a couch feels safe enough. But when Emil leans over to show you his book, or when he asks to take a better look at your knitting, you’re painfully aware of how close he is, how easy it would be to close that space between you. You’re determined not to do it. But even then, you find yourself wishing that Emil would do it for you, and you don’t know how to stop that wanting.

Emil has kept his distance since that night. That’s the one thing you cling to. You haven’t discussed it, you aren’t  _ going  _ to discuss it. You can’t. But he hasn’t done anything more since then and things between him and Lalli seem undamaged, and you have to believe that he recognizes it was a mistake in the same way you do.

It doesn’t stop you from remembering that night, it doesn’t stop you from remembering the feeling of his arms around you. It doesn’t stop you from wishing he would only— No. Whatever you might  _ want,  _ you know better.

You maintain that balance for a while. Until one afternoon you spend together, where Emil falls asleep on the couch beside you. You’re reluctant to move and disturb him, and eventually set aside your knitting and doze off yourself. You think it must be because you’re so close to each other, but you when you wake up in your forest, Emil is there too. You find a soft patch of moss beneath the trees to sit, and after a moment of hesitation, Emil settles down with you, right against your side. You’re frozen, torn between moving away yourself and letting this just— happen. It takes you too long to realize that all Emil is doing is talking.

He complains vaguely, without much direction, about how his clothing will be stained green or the likelihood of there are insects or whether these conditions are  _ really  _ that sanitary. You expect that he’s drifting in the dream if those are his worries, though you know him well enough by now to know that in the absence of anything else to discuss, he likes to idly complain. Either he’ll be more lucid soon, or he’ll change the subject. A flock of fish go flying by overhead and you sigh and just accept it.

You try to relax into the forest, to let your mind unfocus and just enjoy the moment. You take the time to appreciate the way the light from above dims and diffuses as it makes its way down through the branches, and the sharper glare where it reflects off the running water of the stream. The wind ruffles the leaves overhead, and you push back your hood so you can feel it better. The air smells clean, damp and earthy and alive. The area around Brúardalur isn’t unpleasant, but it isn’t the same as this.

It takes you a moment to realize Emil has stopped talking. When you turn to look at him, he’s studying you.

He smiles crookedly. “You really…  _ belong _ here, don’t you?”

You’re not entirely sure what he means. “I should hope so. I made this space.”

“No, I mean—” He gestures widely with one arm.  _ “Here. _ In the woods. It suits you.”

You don’t know how to reply to that. But you don’t have to. Before you can decide what to say, Emil turns a little further into you, stretches up, and lightly kisses you.

It’s easier to respond to this. You kiss him back, equally soft. And then neither of you stops.

You know time is passing, but it’s difficult to tell how much when you’re like this, when you’re caught like this in the quiet peace of the forest. A part of you knows you should stop, but you— can’t. Eventually, you half-wake, just enough to feel Emil shifting beside you. It isn’t much, not enough to pull him entirely from sleep, but he moves close enough that the top of his head is pressed against the side of your thigh. Then his hand comes to rest on top of your leg. 

There’s nothing more past that, and he remains with you in the dream, undisturbed. You finally manage to force yourself to act, but you don’t manage to push him away. You ought to, but you can’t bring yourself to actually do it. Instead, you rouse yourself just far enough that you can reach over to him with one hand. You kiss him in the forest and card your fingers through his hair on the couch, and he sighs happily and tucks himself into your side.

After a while, even in the dream, you lose track of the kiss.  You and Emil lean into each other, dozing in the warm sunlight. You drift between deep sleep, your forest, and the house, aimlessly, only just awake enough to be aware of Emil curled against you or his head pressed against your leg. On some level, you know that at some point, you need to call an end to things. But you can’t bring yourself to disrupt the moment.

You wake entirely when you’re poked— _ hard _ —in the eye.

_“Lalli—” _you groan, before you’re even fully aware. And then you’re hit with a rush of guilt, guilt and _fear,_ because you’ve failed to control yourself, again, and now he must have found out in the worst possible way. You blink your vision clear just in time to see Emil receiving the same treatment as you, and have to duck away as he sputters and flails his way upright.

But when you get a proper look at Lalli, he just seems vaguely amused as he watches the two of you. He informs you, “Your food is getting cold,” and turns and walks away.

You follow him more slowly. There’s an entire meal laid out on the table. “When did you do this?”

He gives you a sideways look. “Just now. Neither of you woke up, so I let you sleep.” He pauses for a moment. “Emil can do all the dishes.”

“Hey!”

It keeps happening. Not in the same ways, and not every day, but often enough that you can feel your resolve crumbling. You ignore the guilt as well as you can. You ignore the part of you that says you should know better than this. You control yourself well enough that— You don’t approach Emil yourself. That isn’t enough. You let yourself drift together with him, you find yourself waiting for the moment when he turns to you. Hoping for it. Weathering the disappointment if it doesn’t happen.

It would be easier if Lalli saw something,  _ realized  _ something,  _ anything.  _ But it doesn’t happen. He leaves Emil at home while he leaves the house, and you sit with your knitting, with Emil, and you’re helpless.

Once, in desperation, you tell Lalli he should bring Emil with him on these outings. He gives you a puzzled look, one that manages to communicate that you must have no idea what you’re talking about, and says, “I’m not bringing him to work, that would be stupid.”

It’s so far from anything you had expected that all you can do is blink. “Work?”

“It’s only farm magic.” He waves one hand dismissively. “Emil doesn’t move fast enough, and he’d be even less help than weird foreign mages.”

“You know I can hear you,” Emil says from the couch. 

“Even more useless than Reynir,” Lalli repeats, a little louder. He shakes his head solemnly, but he’s watching Emil for his reaction.

All he gets from Emil is a heavy, long-suffering sigh, so you ask,  _ “Work?” _ You are perhaps still struggling to catch up.

Lalli’s gaze shifts to you and his eyebrows pull together. “Obviously. Or else it would be too boring here. And the bakery is expensive. I make Reynir tell me what they need at night, and then I don’t have to listen to him trying to speak a real language during the day.”

You still have more questions, but he slips around you and out the door before you can voice any of them. Emil is more helpful, when you finally give up and sit down, and does his best to explain things to you. Yes, this has been going on for weeks. No, it’s not the only thing he does when he goes out on his own. And yes, he is spending an impressive amount of money on baked goods. Emil also helpfully informs you that Lalli is picking up bakery-related Icelandic words faster than any other part of the language.

A part of you wants to be bothered that he didn’t tell you, but after Lalli returns home, he mostly seems puzzled that it’s something you’re concerned about in the first place. That night he visits your forest, but when you try to ask him about the work, he only shrugs and gives you vague one-word answers.

You do feel a creeping guilt that you’ve been sitting uselessly at home while Lalli earns money for the family. However, when you make an attempt to tell him that you’re able to take on a share of the work, he just blinks at you and says, “But you have to knit the sweaters,” and proceeds to willfully misunderstand everything else you try to say.

Every day you pass in Emil’s company is— Good. Dangerous. You already knew you weren’t able to say no to him, but now you can’t even pretend that you want to. It’s so tempting to slip away into a fantasy that somehow everything can simply… last, just like this, in some easy dream where Lalli doesn’t know all the things you’ve failed to tell him, and somehow, wouldn’t care if he  _ did  _ know. 

There’s a dissonance in your thoughts, and you recognize it, but you can’t force yourself away from it. It frustrates you, every time you catch yourself imagining that life. If you thought Lalli and Emil had, had drifted apart, or had never been that close to begin with, it might be different. But they’re as close as ever. 

Your self-control slips, and you face no consequences for your actions, and it slips further. Emil comes to speak to you while you’re preparing dinner and catches your attention with a touch to your shoulder. When you turn to speak to him, he stands close, his hand resting on your arm. You can see Lalli sitting in an armchair, watching both of you, and you should step away from Emil, but you  _ can’t.  _ And Lalli looks away, unconcerned,  _ somehow, _ and you learn nothing. 

You can’t tell if you imagine that Emil sits at home with you more often, reading books in a language he can barely speak, or if it’s simply wishful thinking. In desperation, you finally ask him outright whether he gets anything from reading Finnish books. The question surprises him, you think. His Finnish is worse than usual and he stammers, but he manages to explain that he knows he’s missing a lot as he reads, but he thinks that it still helps. He conveys this somewhat with words, but more with a number of expressive gestures. 

By the end, his face is pink and his voice is trailing off as he tells you that it also helps to have someone here to answer his questions. At least you’re… fairly sure that’s what he’s trying to say, but after that he buries his nose in his latest book and doesn’t say a word until Lalli comes home.

That night, you stay up later than the other two. Halfway through the back of Lalli’s sweater, you realize that there’s a glaring mistake in your work, almost back at the very beginning. And somehow you’ve only just noticed. These things happen, you know they do. But you’re still frustrated when you begin ripping out stitches and you’re even more frustrated by the time you finally reach the point of your mistake. And you are tired, but it seems like such a waste to go to bed now. You know you won’t be able to recreate all the work you undid in just one night, but perhaps you can make it past the colorwork in the hem, so that there’s less to redo in the morning.

Eventually, you become aware of a hand on your shoulder, gently shaking you awake.

“Sorry, sorry,” Emil whispers. “I saw you weren’t on bed—  _ in  _ bed.” 

You sit upright and wince. Your back isn’t pleased with you. And staying out here longer will not improve that situation. 

Your lap is still covered with knitting and loose yarn. Emil helps you clear it off to the side, and you can only hope it won’t be too tangled in the morning. After that, he offers you a hand to help you upright. Without thinking, you take it. 

The sensation of his hand wrapped around yours jolts you further awake. And suddenly, you are painfully aware of how close he is. It’s so similar to before, with the hush of night around you and Emil standing in front of you, watching you, with his hair messy from sleep. The warmth of his hand is a sharp contrast to the nighttime chill, and you can’t help remembering how warm he was against you when— 

You cut off that memory, but it does you no good. Emil beams at you, and your heart begins to pound. He turns away, back towards the hallway, and your hand slips from his. You almost reach out for him again, almost take that leap before you can remember why you shouldn’t, but he looks back over his shoulder and you freeze before you can make a move. 

You follow him back towards the bedrooms, and for a moment as you approach his room, you wonder if he means to invite you there, or to lead on to  _ yours,  _ but the question has barely formed in your mind when he turns through his door, waving goodnight to you as he goes. You go to your room, alone, and try to ignore the way your heart is still racing. And try even harder to ignore the bitter, choking disappointment.


	5. Chapter 5

It isn’t long until everything reaches a tipping point. It happens after dinner one night. You’ve finished the knitting and blocking for Lalli’s sweater, and you’ve just begun sewing the first seam. This has become a routine, you and Emil sitting on the couch, Lalli in his favorite armchair, you working while the other two talk. It’s the same today, until Lalli says, casually, “I’m going out tonight.”

Your first impulse is to frown. “Mage work?”

“No. I just miss seeing things at night.”

You glance at Emil, but it seems to be a surprise to him too. You say, “I could go with you.”

“Or I can, if you want,” Emil adds.

Lalli sighs hard, rolls his eyes, and turns his head to look off to the other side of the room. You think that’s probably enough of an answer.

“When will you be back?” you ask.

He just shrugs. “Don’t wait for me.”

Unsurprisingly, as soon as he finishes making the announcement, he starts getting ready to leave. Within minutes, he’s slipping out the door and into the town. The sound of the door closing behind him feels too loud in the sudden quiet. You glance at Emil and find him already looking at you, and quickly turn your eyes back to the sweater in your hands.

You hold out for all of ten minutes. You might not be looking at Emil, but you’re _ aware _ of him in a way you can’t escape. The back of your neck prickles, and you can feel your face heating. He hasn’t said anything, you aren’t watching him, there’s no _ reason _for this.

Finally, the tension is more than you can bear, and you turn in your seat to look at Emil again. He’s reading, but he jumps when he sees you move and very nearly drops his book. You don’t know what to say. He looks as frozen as you feel, and you see him swallow hard. 

He says, “Onni—” but then his voice trails off.

Before you can consciously decide to do it, you reach out with one hand.

It’s enough. You hear the book fall to the floor, and you’re trying to push your knitting back off your lap one-handed. Your other hand is already on Emil’s waist. He’s closed the space between you and is kneeling up on the cushions beside you. He bends down towards you, reaching up to cup your face, and you shiver as his fingers brush over your cheeks. You shiver again when he kisses you. 

The angle isn’t easy, but you don’t want to let go. You let your hand slide from his waist around to his back, so your palm is flat against his spine, pressing him in towards you. Your eyes are shut, and you kiss him, deeply, until he pulls back just far enough to take an unsteady breath. You reach up with your other hand, but from this angle—

Instead of trying to twist even further, you lean into the back of the couch, pulling Emil with you. His weight shifts as he follows you, and you feel him inching further forward, then swinging one leg up over your lap. The sudden heat in your stomach makes your breath catch, and you wrap your other arm around him, pulling him tight against you. 

Emil doesn’t resist. He doesn’t kiss you again, but he rests his forehead against yours and slips his arms around your neck. He says, “Do you…” Then he pauses. “Can I—” He hesitates again, then groans. His voice is plaintive when he says, “This is _ easier, _if sleeping.”

You want that, too, so badly it aches. But still, “You’re more lucid when you’re awake. You’re not always aware when you’re dreaming.”

He sighs heavily. You don’t disagree. It isn’t easy to choose one, to be able to speak and understand each other, or to know he’s fully _ himself. _You force yourself to open your eyes and look at him. If he asks you to dream with him, you’ll do it. But you haven’t forgotten how it felt after that first— encounter, not knowing whether or not he was fully aware of his own actions.

But you aren’t given much time to linger over that. Before you can dwell on it much further, Emil smile down at you and confidently says, “I’m not _ completely _ bad at Finnish.”

You don’t know if you’ll be able to match his smile, so you don’t try. Instead, you pull him down into another kiss, which seems to please him well enough. 

The kiss is easier, but it can’t last forever. You can feel the heat in your stomach growing, and Emil is kissing you with more urgency, and the moment he asks for more, you’re going to tell him yes. Before then, you have to say— something.

There are so many reasons you shouldn’t mention this, but the best you manage to do is stop yourself from phrasing it as a question. Instead you say, “It’s been a while.” As soon as the words leave your mouth, you regret it, and do your best not to wince. You shouldn’t have said anything. 

“Yes,” Emil says, then hesitates. He sits back in your lap and takes his arms from around you, though he leaves his hands resting on your chest. You feel trapped and wish you’d never spoken, but it helps that Emil doesn’t look directly at you. His face is pink and he keeps his gaze fixed over your shoulder as he slowly says, “I wanted… Not moving too quickly. Not pushing. Then before—” He makes a face and lifts one hand to gesture. You can see him getting more and more flushed as he goes on. “Moving quickly, pushing. Yes? Becoming— If I don’t want— Not being a _ mistake.” _

It’s also becoming increasingly harder to follow what he’s trying to say. Bringing this up was a bad idea, but asking him about abstract concepts at a time like this probably qualifies as an additional lapse in judgment. 

But just to be sure, you ask, “Do you want this, now?”

_ “Yes,” _he says, emphatically enough that it eases the knot in your chest. More quietly, he adds, “And you…?”

Your voice is barely more than a whisper. “Yes.”

He curls back into you, burying his face against the side of your neck for a moment. Then he straightens far enough to kiss you again, even more enthusiastically than before. His stomach is pressed against yours, and you close your eyes and lose yourself in the sensation of the kiss, feeling the weight of him and the pressure of his thighs around your legs, pinning you in place.

You manage to remain aware enough to realize that you shouldn’t do this on the couch. But you don’t quite make it to a bed either. You get close— You urge Emil to his feet without much trouble and lead him down the hallway to your room. And you don’t even get as far as turning on your light. After you close your bedroom door behind you, you turn and look at him, and you bend to kiss him, and you fail to _ stop _kissing him. Your thigh is pressed between his and he rocks against you as the kiss continues. 

As it continues, he begins to make little soft noises against your mouth, and his hands clutch hard at the back of your shirt, and you _ need _ to give him everything he wants. It’s difficult to force yourself to push him far enough away for him to turn around, and you don’t know if you’d be able to find the words to explain right now. But Emil only has a moment to protest before you pull him to you again, his back pressed against your chest. He clutches at your arms as they wrap around him, and he leans into you and turns his head, trying to kiss the side of your face.

You slip one hand under his shirt, letting your palm press flat against his stomach. And you hear the soft, shuddering way he gasps when your other hand slides under his waistband. Once your fingers brush against his cock, the only thing he can manage to say is, “Yes, _ yes—” _

Your bed is right next to you, but there’s no chance you’d be able to release him now. He leans back into you as you touch him, his fingers tangled in the fabric of your sleeves. You rock against him too, letting yourself feel the warmth of him and the pressure of his body against yours. Emil’s breathing is already ragged and you can feel dampness against your palm. You feel like you could stay like this for hours, but you don’t think he’ll last much longer.

When he comes, he gasps your name. You can feel your own breath catch and have to squeeze your eyes shut for a moment. You try to hold him even more tightly against you, letting your free hand slide further up his stomach, pulling him in towards you. And you keep your other hand down his pants, working against him, until he finally takes a slower, unsteady breath and goes from clutching your arm to trying to push it away. 

Even then, you— Don’t move, not yet. You take your hand from his pants and let it rest against his stomach, and you take Emil’s weight as he leans into you, but you tilt your hips back and away. You’re still hard, and it isn’t that you want to put any distance between you, but it will be… easier this way. 

Emil doesn’t seem to notice. He tilts his head sideways so that his cheek rests against yours, and puts his arms over yours, his hands resting on your hands. He seems content to stand like that, and you can just hold him and hear it as his breathing gradually slows and steadies.

It can’t last, and eventually he does pull away. He captures your hand in his as he turns to face you. His hand is warm around yours as he hopefully says, “And next?”

The question isn’t exactly a surprise. It’s not quite the right question, but you’re reluctant to face the issue directly. So you only tell Emil, “Bed,” and let him draw certain conclusions himself.

And this night— You let yourself fuss over him. 

First you help him out of his clothes. He lets you lead him to the bed and lay him down, and he begins to reach out to you, but you don’t join him yet. You reach over him and pull pillows over to you. With one hand, you lift his head and slide them into place. When you look at his face, he’s smiling softly up at you. There’s a stray lock of hair in his face, and you smooth it back and away, lay it down on the pillow. You’re frozen like that for a moment, just looking at him. He’s still smiling, and he reaches up with one hand to touch your wrist. Your face is burning, and you’re painfully grateful that the room is so dim. You can only hope that your expression isn’t betraying too much of what you feel right now.

Emil yawns hard, and his eyes drift shut, breaking the spell. You make yourself lie down next to him. He turns up onto one side, reaching out for you. You shiver as his hand comes to rest on your waist, and do your best to ignore the pulse of heat as your body reminds you how badly you still want him. Instead, you focus on Emil. You set out the pillows once already, but if he’s going to lie on his side— 

He lies there, blinking sleepily, as you rearrange the pillows. And the blankets. If you’d realized this was going to happen, then perhaps you could have been more ready— Or maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. You know exactly what blankets you have on your bed, but it takes you longer than it should to find the best of them. Now that the encounter is over, you can feel the nighttime chill beginning to set in, and Emil must be feeling it too. You pull a beaver fur blanket up over him, then a knitted blanket, for the soothing weight of it. You hesitate, then add a rabbit fur blanket on top of those. It’s an older piece of your work, and not as well made as it could be, but it’s the softest blanket on your bed.

By the time you’ve arranged the bed to your satisfaction, Emil is more than half asleep and appears to have completely forgotten about anything other than rest. It suits you perfectly. You can… hide it, when things go badly for you. After an encounter like this. But it’s easier if you don’t have to. And the more you can keep yourself out of the proceedings, the easier it is to hold onto control of your emotions.

Emil is only just awake enough to tug at your shirt. His hands are clumsy, and you aren’t sure his eyes are open at all. But he tugs again, insistently, and you surrender. You close the space between the two of you, move to tuck him up against your chest. Like— last time.

But this time, as you draw close, Emil shifts and turns away from you, onto his other side. He burrows his head down into the pillows you placed, but you hesitate, uncertain. Before you can convince yourself to back away, he reaches out blindly behind him, and catches the fabric of your pants. He mumbles something unintelligible and Swedish-sounding, but you take your best guess and press up against his back, slipping one arm over his waist, letting your palm rest against his stomach. He lets out a happy sigh and says, distinctly, “Good.” And almost immediately, he’s asleep.

You don’t fall apart like you did before. But you have time, lying there in bed, for the reality of your actions to hit you again. It ought to be terrible and you aren’t sure why it isn’t. Your heart pounds and your chest is painfully tight, but it’s still bearable. You’re able to ignore the slight tremble in your hands and pull Emil even more closely against you. Perhaps it’s just that you’ve spent so long trying to convince yourself that you _ could _ have this that you’ve begun to believe it. 

You could let your thoughts race in miserable circles all night long, but you desperately, desperately don’t want to. Instead, you still press your forehead to the back of Emil’s head and hold him to you. You push the doubts to the side and focus on the way you can feel his heartbeat through your palm, and do your best to sleep. 

The next morning, you let Emil kiss you as you’re cooking breakfast. When you collect up your knitting, you take a seat that’s— closer to him than you’ve been. Before. Lalli doesn’t emerge from his room until after noon, and when he sees you still sitting together, he only blinks at you with blank unconcern. While you finish the seams on Lalli’s sweater, he sits on the couch with you both, his legs casually draped across Emil’s lap, and you ought to be more terrified of the questions he deserves to ask you.

It’s only the next day when Lalli leaves for work and you and Emil get distracted by each other and waste an hour, just kissing, in the kitchen with Emil bent backwards over the counter and his arms around your neck. Lalli and Reynir plan another excursion to the hot spring, until they’re pulled away by Reynir’s sister, who has a message from Reynir’s father about urgent mage work needed with the sheep. They tell you to go without them, and you don’t argue, only let Emil lead you out of town and into the hills. You listen to him talk— You talk _ with _him. You soak in the hot springs and doze together. You kiss him softly, the side of his leg pressed against yours under the water.

Lalli continues to go out wandering after dinner. Every time he does, Emil spends the night in your room. You want him, and you don’t want to say no to him, and he seems happy with anything you offer him. You press him into wall, his hands braced against the wood, with your hand down the front of his hands. You slip into bed together and let your legs tangle underneath the blankets as you touch him. He wants to return the favor, you know. But this has never been… easy for you, and you try to steer him away from that when you can. There are still some bad nights, especially when he tries to do things for you, so you hide that from him as well as you can. Successfully, you think.

But it isn’t always for sex. He’s also happy to lie in bed and let you arrange your pillows and furs around him until you’re satisfied, and then he pulls you down beside him and falls asleep with his face pressed into your shoulder. In some ways, that’s more terrifying than the sex ever could be.

And you dream together more frequently. You think it must be the physical proximity. It’s dangerous. It would be so easy for Lalli or Reynir to stumble onto you here. You could spend the nights in your forest without wandering. Or you could shut Emil out of your dreams and let him pass the nights in his own mind. He wouldn’t be in danger, not here in Iceland. This is the safest place you’ve ever lived. You still can’t bring yourself to do it. You visit the memory of his home. You sit and talk quietly and eat cake with him, and when you kiss him, you can faintly taste strawberries on his lips. You sit in your forest with Emil between your legs, leaning back into your chest, and you push his hair to the side to kiss the back of his neck as he guides your other hand down between his legs.

It can’t last. You know that. There are too many pieces of this that are too fragile, too many things that you can’t count on lasting, that you _ know _ can’t endure. And over it all, you can’t escape the knowledge that you should never have allowed this to happen in the first place.

But you did. You let it happen, and you let it continue to happen. You didn’t say no, and now, you don’t know you’d be able to. You don’t _ want _ to. You want to say yes and keep saying yes and somehow convince yourself that this is something that can continue. That you can _ have. _

You can feel it all balanced on the edge of something dangerous when Emil rolls over towards you in bed and says, so earnestly it makes you ache, “I want this to be good for you.”

“It is,” you tell him.

“Yes, but—” He frowns at you as he tries to find the right words, and you know what he’s trying to say. You just can’t bring yourself to help him. He places one hand in the middle of your chest. “Something_ better.” _

Instead of answering him, you reach up with one hand to card your fingers through his hair. He sighs and leans into that touch, but there’s a stubborn set to his jaw that makes you think he won’t let this go so easily. 

Emil breaks the silence again. “It’s just…” His hand slides down from your chest, and for a moment you tense, but he just moves it to rest on your waist. He looks away from you, and even in the dim light, you can see his face is red. “I want to— What you do for me. For you.”

You still don’t respond to him. It isn’t that you’re planning to ignore him. But you don’t know what to tell him. You keep running your fingers through his hair as you do your best to think through what you can even say. He’s studying you sideways, and you wish you knew what he was seeing.

Doubtfully, he says, “Unless you… don’t want?”

It’s tempting to just agree with him. It would be a lie. But it would be such an easy lie. Barely a lie, even, you just have to nod along and let him believe you don’t want him that way. That you don’t want _ this _from him. But the idea of misleading him that way makes your stomach twist uneasily.

You still have to force the words out. “That isn’t the problem.”

Emil’s eyes snap back to your face. His hand is still on your waist, and you can feel his grip tighten slightly. “What is the problem? I can help— Ah, _ can _I help?”

It’s too much. You sit up, and even then, you have to shut your eyes. “I’m the problem. It isn’t— easy. For me”

“I can—”

“More difficult than you’re thinking,” you interrupt. “Whatever you’re picturing right now, it’s harder than that. You don’t need to worry about it. I’m fine.”

He sits up too, but doesn’t say anything for a moment. When you force yourself to look at him again, you can tell by the look on his face that he isn’t willing to simply accept that. He asks, “May I try?”

At first, it’s easy. It’s just like— other times. It lets you pretend that things are normal. You cup Emil’s face in your hands, and you close your eyes and kiss him and try your hardest not to think about anything else.

It’s easy because Emil makes it easy. He kisses back, softly. You feel his hand on your thigh, and flinch, just a little, but he doesn’t do anything more. There’s gentle pressure from his fingers on the inside of your leg, but he’s only using that as leverage to turn further towards you. The angle isn’t the easiest like this, with both of you sitting side by side, twisting to reach each other. But he doesn’t make any other move to reposition himself.

For a while, there isn’t anything but that. It’s just Emil’s mouth, warm against yours, both of you exchanging soft, shallow kisses. His hand stays on your leg, a solid, reassuring point of contact. Time drifts in a way that feels unreal, and you don’t know how long it is before you steel yourself and do something… more.

Right now, that something _ more _only means taking your hands from Emil’s cheeks and letting them drift backwards, so you can thread your fingers through his hair. He doesn’t say anything, which is good. He sighs against your mouth, with his exhale just unsteady enough for you to notice, which is better. You don’t know if you could speak if he said something to you, but you need to know that he’s— happy? That he’s content. That’s enough. 

Running your fingers through his hair, over and over, gives you something to focus on. The kiss holds part of your attention, Emil’s hair holds the rest. Your eyes are still closed, but you focus on sensations, on the feeling of his lips, his hand on your leg, the way his hair slides smoothly over your fingers. He makes a little noise in the back of his throat, just barely loud enough to hear. You do your best to relax into him, to lose yourself in the moment.

It’s still some minutes longer before you do anything else. Even then, you only take one hand from Emil’s hair—you feel him shiver against you—and let it fall to rest on his waist. He makes a louder, pleased noise and starts to lean further into you, but hesitates. Instead, he pulls away, breaking the kiss. Reluctantly, you open your eyes, and try to fight a surge of bitter regret that you ever let any of— _ this _ come up between the two of you in the first place.

Emil doesn’t go far, though. He’s breathing harder than normal, and there’s enough moonlight coming through the window to see him swallow once before he speaks. His voice is hushed when he says, “Where should I—? I can—” He stops, winces, and shakes his head, and then tries again. “Tell me where to be?”

You want to refuse to answer, to turn the choice back on him. Even though you _ know _that would be missing the entire point of what he wants. You don’t manage to respond to him in words, but you show him. You lie back on the bed, guiding him up over you. 

This… might not work, ultimately. It’s always hard for you to tell. But for now, the weight of him on top of you is reassuring and steadying. Emil looks down at you from above, and his hair hangs around his face and catches the moonlight. His face is almost solemn as he studies you, and you wish you knew what he was looking for, or what he was seeing. It ought to make you uneasy. And it does. But at the same time, you’re struck all over again with the awareness that whatever he asks of you, you won’t be able to deny him. And he wants this from you, or _ for _ you.

Whatever he’s looking for, he must find it, because he smiles, open and brilliant, and bends down to kiss you. You shut your eyes again and try desperately to relax.

_ Wanting _Emil— That hasn’t ever been a problem. You could already feel the effect he was having on you, just from the soft, chaste kisses. This is something else altogether, and you can’t help reacting to it. This kiss is much more heated from the start. Now, he stretches out along your body and takes your face in his hands, studying you for a moment longer before bending down to kiss you. Your lips part easily under his, and you want this. You do. 

Your legs are an awkward tangle that would be easier to resolve if you broke the kiss, but neither of you is willing to do so. You both try to adjust without pulling apart, and after a moment, one of his legs slots between your thighs and you suck in a sharp breath of air as you feel him press against you.

Even before he starts rocking against you, you’re hard. And you can feel him responding to you in the same way. His thigh stays pressed between your legs, but you feel his cock against your hip every time he moves, and do your best to give him more contact. He makes a pleased noise into your mouth and sinks down even further into you, though his hips don’t stop moving against yours.

This is— comfortable. _ Familiar. _It’s something you can do. Emil’s weight isn’t enough to pin you, but it makes it easy to surrender and let yourself be pinned. He’s a warm, solid presence above you, and the furs beneath you are soft and yielding. Emil’s hands are on your cheeks, holding you steady, and you feel the fur brush against the back of your neck whenever one of you moves. And you’re moving constantly now, pushing your hips up and into him. 

The pressure of his thigh against you is heavy and perfect, but you try not to lose yourself in that. You need to focus enough to take in Emil’s reactions, to understand what he needs from you right now. You’re reminded all over again of how easy it’s become to fall into this rhythm with him, and a treacherous part of your mind whispers that you’re becoming complacent. You push that thought aside and try to ignore it. Instead, you shut your eyes and take in the sensation of Emil above, you against you, his mouth on yours, and you try as hard as you can to relax.

To distract yourself, you raise your hands to his body. You find his waist first, and the fabric of his shirt is caught between your stomach and his, but you have enough room to slip your hands underneath and let them rest against the bare skin of his back. When you press your palms flat against him, he makes a pleased noise against your mouth, then kisses you with even more enthusiasm than before.

You leave your hands there for a few seconds, not moving them, just letting them rest in place. Holding him against you. That isn’t enough, though. You start letting them drift and wander, up along his spine, out over his waist. Down towards the waistband of his pants. He pushes away from you, and you freeze for a moment, but all he does is reach down between you and push your shirt up as far as it will go. You shiver at how warm his hands are on your chest. He bends down to resume the kiss, and when you press your thigh up against him, he gasps and slips easily back into rhythm with you again. Time drifts away from you as you focus on the feeling of him moving with you.

And— You know he wants this to be about you. That he wants to do this for you. But you can’t help being… tempted. If he finishes first, you might be able to use that to distract him. You can picture it, holding him close, feeling him dozing off with his head resting on your chest, pulling furs over the two of you as the heat of the encounter fades and you start to feel the coldness of the night air again. It’s an appealing thought. It would be— easier.

The appeal outweighs the vague, creeping sense of guilt. Before you can think too deeply about it, you let your fingers slide under the waistband of Emil’s pants. You pull him down against you, pushing up into him just a little more at the same time. His head snaps up, and you regret the loss of the kiss, but it helps that you can hear how ragged his breathing is already. The way he moves against you becomes noticeably more urgent, and with every thrust, you can feel his cock sliding against your hip. You’re almost certain he’s close, you just need a _ little _ more— 

But then he does push away from you. He sits up, shifting his hips back from yours. And he grabs for your wrists too, capturing your hands and pulling them away from his body. He pauses there, eyes shut, still breathing hard. You’re motionless, trapped underneath him, watching him and trying to read his expression in the dim light.

Objectively, you aren’t like that for long. But it feels like an eternity. Emil’s hold on you shifts, and you’re still frozen, but he manages to fumble his grip around so that he’s holding your hands instead, his fingers laced with yours. He bends forward over you again, looking down at you, and reflexively, you shut your eyes. It’s foolish, and you immediately regret it, but opening them now would be worse. You’re both silent, even when his hips press against yours again. He doesn’t begin moving against you, just gently pins your hands to the bed, one on either side of your head.

“Hey,” he says, very softly.

You turn your head so that you won’t be looking at him, and then you can force yourself to open your eyes. You focus on his hand on yours, seeing the way they both sink into the furs, feeling the slight strain it puts on your shoulders. Then you’re able to speak. “Is something wrong?”

“No, no! I was going to—” He hesitates, then sighs. “I don’t know the word.” 

You don’t know what to say, so you don’t say anything. After a moment, Emil shifts so that more of his weight rests on your hands, bends down further, and kisses your cheek. Reluctantly, you turn your head so that he can reach your mouth instead. It isn’t easy, but it’s— better.

And when he pulls away again, he doesn’t go far. He’s smiling down at you now, and his hair hangs around your face like a curtain, still catching the moonlight at the edges. Emil says, “Will this work? For you, I mean, if we stay like this?”

‘Yes’ is a dangerous answer. ‘No’ is a dangerous answer. So when you open your mouth, what comes out is the truth, which is even worse. “I don’t know.”

There’s no reason for your stomach to twist the way it does. That doesn’t help, of course, and that awareness of your own reactions only pulls you even more taut. It’s difficult to look at Emil, but with his hair still falling around your face like this, you have nowhere else to look.

He blinks once, but then smiles again. “That’s good— No, not good. Fine? That’s fine. We can try something different.”

Trying something different means letting go of your hands. You miss what Emil says next, you’re too distracted by how cold and empty your hands feel without him there. You’re jolted back into the present when he lands heavily on the bed beside you, on his side, still smiling. He says something in Swedish that you’re too rattled to translate. But he hooks one foot over your legs and reaches out to grab your far shoulder, and it doesn’t take you too long to realize he’s trying to position you over him. 

Once you’re in place, you pause, looking down at him with your weight braced on your elbows. He sets his hands on your waist for a moment, studying you. Then he pats your side reassuringly and says, “Like this, maybe?”

“Maybe,” you agree. You still don’t know. But at least it’s the truth.

This isn’t so different from before. It helps, in some ways, being on top. You have to concentrate more, focus on setting the rhythm, trying not to rest too much of your weight on Emil, where to put your hands, how to position yourself against him— You could just let it happen as it happens, but you try to concentrate on those details, let them distract and settle you. 

You keep yourself braced on your elbows, so that you can stay pressed close to Emil’s chest. That much of it is purely for yourself. His legs are parted around your waist and his arms are wrapped around you, his hands slipping up the back of your shirt and leaving warm trails against your skin. 

For a moment, you bury your face in the side of his neck, your chest and stomach flush with his. You wish you could just stay like that, but you don’t want to crush him. So after a moment, you make yourself pull back. You close your eyes and rock your hips to feel the pressure of his cock against yours, slightly muffled by two layers of fabric. And then you focus on moving.

Emil is the one to kiss you. You aren’t expecting it, and it’s a surprise at first, a glancing contact against your chin that it takes you a moment to understand. Your eyes fly open just in time to see Emil stretch up and try again. This time he manages to hit the corner of your mouth, but the angle is wrong for him. When he sees you looking, he smiles a little sheepishly, and says, “Yes? Or, no—?” 

_ Yes. _ You don’t trust your voice, and you don’t know how much of this you really— want. But you know you want that. You let yourself bend low over him again, your chest against his, and kiss him. He wraps his arms even more tightly around you and deepens the kiss. You hesitate, but you want this, you want to relax into the reassuring solidness of his body, and you let it happen. He takes your weight without protest, and kisses you even more hungrily than before. Despite— everything, you feel heat building in your stomach. You might be able to give him what he wants.

Your body is perfectly aligned with his, and with every movement of your hips, you feel your cock slide against his. His feet are braced against the bed, and he pushes up against you every time you rock into him. His hands are pressed flat against your shoulder blades, and you feel him— 

For a moment, you’re confused, until you realize he’s trying to push the shirt up over your head. Without breaking the kiss. You can give him this. You pull away, with some reluctance, and tug the shirt over your head and toss it to the side. He beams at you in a way that leaves you completely breathless, and reaches down to wrestle off his own shirt. The moment it’s gone, he pulls you down to him again, and you want him so badly that it’s almost a physical pain. 

After that, you continue to kiss him. He reaches down between the two of you, slipping a hand between your stomachs. If he wants you to pull away far enough to take your pants off— you don’t know if you’ll be able to do it. But he doesn’t ask for that. He finds your waistband, fumbles with it for a moment, and slips his hand into your pants.

The instant his fingers brush your cock, you lose the kiss. You let your forehead rest on the pillow besides Emil’s head, and all you can hear is his unsteady breathing right next to your ear. He must be able to hear you in the same way, but you don’t think you can control that right now. You shiver as Emil’s hand wraps around you, and for a moment you feel a rush of cold fear that he wants you to finish this way, and you don’t know how to tell him you don’t— you don’t know if you’ll be able to. 

But he only holds you lightly, and after a second, you realize that isn’t what he wants. He reaches down with the other hand, and his fingers are clumsy and you hear him curse quietly in Swedish. After a few seconds, he manages to push your pants down just far enough to free your cock. 

For a moment, you feel your cock press against the soft, warm skin of his stomach, and you shudder helplessly. It’s almost too much, and you have no idea how to communicate that, or whether you even _ want _it to stop. Then you feel his knuckles against your stomach, and it takes you longer than it should to realize he’s fighting his own waistband now.

Emil gasps, and a moment later you can feel his cock sliding against yours. A strangled noise escapes you, and you bite your lip hard, burying your face against the side of Emil’s neck again. His hand is still trapped between you, but his fingers are even more clumsy now and you aren’t sure what he’s trying to do, or if he knows what he’s trying to do. His hips push up into you, and before you consciously decide to do it, you’re moving against him again, your hips working against his. 

You’re pressed as close to him as you could be, and still trying to press closer. Emil’s free hand clutches at your back, and you feel his nails dig into your skin. The only thing you can hear is his ragged breathing. Then he makes a noise that’s more open, almost shocked, and you realize he’s coming. 

You rest your weight on one elbow and somehow manage to work your other arm under his back, pulling him up to you as you bear down against him. He turns his head further into you, still making small noises every time you move. His mouth is pressed against the side of your neck, his lips slightly parted, and you can feel the heat of every breath he takes against your bare skin.

There isn’t any point where he tries to push you away. You’re more grateful for that than you could express. But you can tell when it’s finished, and you know it must be becoming uncomfortable for him. So with some difficulty, you force yourself to stop. After that you have to pause for a long moment, shivering slightly with the effort it takes to hold yourself motionless. Your face is still buried against Emil’s neck, and you kiss him there once, then again. Then you make yourself move away.

He doesn’t let you go. You try to roll off onto your side, but the moment you shift your weight, he wraps his arm even more tightly around your waist and moves with you. You aren’t where you were before, and one of your shoulders is digging into bed now, but half your weight is still on top of him. One of Emil’s legs is hooked around yours, and he pats your shoulder reassuringly before letting his palm press flat against your back. Somehow, _ this _is what makes your throat close, and you have to blink hard.

Before you can think of what to say, Emil groans and says, _ “Sorry. _ So sorry. Very, _ very _sorry.”

It takes you by surprise. “Why?”

“This is to you. I mean, for you. Not— Not for _ me.” _

You don’t know what to say, but you need to say something. “It’s fine.” Something better than that. “I like being able to do this for you.” Your cheeks are hot, but he can’t see that right now. And he deserves that admission from you.

“Yes, but…” You can feel Emil make some gesture, even if you can’t see it. You can hear the frustration in his voice. “I like— This is good. _ Amazing. _ And, thank you. I want— To do the _ same.” _

“I know.” You press your lips to the side of his neck, because it’s easier than finding the words you ought to say.

He sighs, and quietly, plaintively says, “Can I still try?” You hesitate, trying not to tense so badly he’ll feel it, and he adds, “If you want.”

“Yes,” you manage. You do want this. Perhaps you wouldn’t have offered if he hadn’t asked, but— 

“Oh, good,” he says, and you can hear the way he must be smiling.

Your mind isn’t clear enough to think through what the easiest way to accomplish this would be. But Emil doesn’t make any move to release you, only relaxes onto his back, still holding you to him. As he shifts against you, you become aware that your cock is still pressed to his bare hip, and the drag of his skin against yours makes you shiver again.

Emil notices. He turns his head to look at you, and now you can see the way he smiles. Hopefully, he says, “Like this, maybe?”

Maybe. And at the very least— You want to try. 

You don’t lie fully on top of him this time. You stay where you are, half on him, and try to relax into the warmth of his body against yours. It’s better than it might have been. One of his arms is trapped under you but still holding you close, his fingers trailing over your skin, over the back of your neck, skimming through your hair. He reaches over with his other hand too, lets it rest against your hip for a moment. As you begin to move, that hand drifts to the small of your back, but it only rests there as a light, undemanding pressure.

Though— You wish you could kiss him right now. You could, if you pulled away and took more of your own weight. You don’t want to do that. Still, it’s almost as good to stay where you are, your face right beside Emil’s. Your breathing is too loud, but he doesn’t comment on it. He kisses your cheek, tilts his head into yours. He says quiet things every so often, and you think some of them might be Finnish, but you can’t always concentrate enough to properly hear him.

You do your best to lose yourself in the physical sensations, to detach yourself and let instinct guide you. You do want this. It’s been— some time since you let things progress to this point, where finishing began to feel like a _ need, _ and you don’t trust your own reactions anymore. You thrust against Emil’s hip, and he whispers soft, reassuring things you can’t quite understand. You think you might be able to do this. You _ want _to. 

At some point, you reached out to grasp Emil’s waist. You realize when your fingers dig harder into his skin, but he just makes a pleased noise, and the hand at your back pulls you down more firmly against him. Your other hand is fisted in the blankets, and you become aware of just how desperate your breathing sounds. You don’t think you’ve been speaking, but you don’t remember. You don’t think you’d be _ able _ to at this point, you can’t imagine how to even begin putting your thoughts to words. But Emil doesn’t seem to be looking for you to say anything. He keeps up a constant, low stream of words, and at this point you aren’t even sure what language he’s speaking, but he still has one hand at the back of your heck, holding you close, and as you grind down against him, he tilts his hips up into yours.

Time slips and drifts away from you, and you don’t know how long you’ve been with Emil like this. You’re close, you know you are. You aren’t— It’s been long enough since this happened that you don’t— Perhaps it’s a small mercy that you aren’t able to vocalize your sudden doubt. You’re just left with the wanting, and Emil told you he wanted this for you, more than once, and you want him, want _ this, _ and it’s a physical pain how badly you _ need him— _

It has been a very long time since this was something you worried about. So when you come, it’s a complete surprise. You nearly bite down on Emil’s shoulder and stop yourself at the last moment. You press your mouth to his skin, not exactly a kiss, but something less deliberate and more intense, until you have to pull away to gasp for air. Emil is still speaking to you, and you still can’t _ hear _his words, but his tone is encouraging and reassuring, and you don’t know what you would do if it wasn’t.

After it’s over, you’re left still pressed against him, overheated but shivering, with your eyes squeezed tight shut as Emil kisses the side of your face. You feel like you ought to move, but you can’t remember how to use your own body. Your skin is burning, but you’re painfully conscious of every little draft that breezes through the room. You should move, but it feels like your body belongs to someone else, and you’re helpless to change that.

Eventually, you manage to roll off to the side, just a little. Enough to release Emil. He doesn’t seem interested in moving away, but just the idea of holding him close right now, if he didn’t _ want _ to be held— You force yourself away from even the idea. You’re still shivering. You feel like you’re made of the thinnest, most brittle glass, and even the lightest touch will leave you in shattered pieces. 

Emil says something else, and you can hear the questioning tone in it, but even if you could understand the words, you don’t think you’d be able to answer him. You ought to be more in control of yourself by now. If you keep acting this way, you’ll worry him. And the longer this lasts, the more likely he is to ask questions you don’t want to answer. You still can’t manage to make your voice work, but you pull Emil up against your chest, put your arms around him, and bury your face in his hair.

You can feel him relax. He pulls one arm out from under you so that it’s trapped between your chest and his, but he wraps his other arm more fully around you, so his palm is pressed flat against your spine. Whatever he says now is much more sleepy and content. You want to feel the same way. You just want to have this.

It takes you too long to recognize that this isn’t… over. You should have realized how you’d react. Perhaps it’s that you didn’t want to think about it. But now that everything else has finished, it’s impossible to ignore— Now that you have nothing else to focus on, nothing else to distract you, you can feel your emotions balanced on a precipice. No, not balanced. You can already feel yourself falling, and you have no idea how badly this is going to go.

You hope Emil falls asleep before you lose control of yourself. That’s the only thing you want right now. You move just enough to take your face from his hair and tuck his head under your chin instead. You can get through this, you know. But you can’t remember the last time you felt so detached from your own body while waiting for this to pass. These reactions are familiar to you, _ hiding _them is familiar to you. You just have to endure now and wait for it to be over.

At first, you think you’re doing well. Your chest aches and your breath wants to catch, but you force yourself to keep breathing steadily. You’re helpless to stop the tears, but that’s nothing new. You let them fall and blink them away as well as you can, and focus on controlling the rest of your body. You can do at least that much.

You can’t. You don’t even realize you’re shaking until you hear Emil mumble something about how cold the room is. He reaches down to pull a blanket up over the two of you, then sighs and settles back against your chest. There. You’ve been given an excuse, and now you _ need _to stop.

Nothing stops. If anything, it gets worse. You can feel the tremor trying to run through your hands, and you press them to Emil’s back to hold them steady. Your heart is racing, but you can’t force it to slow. Your breathing— You should be able to control that. If nothing else, you should be able to do that. Just this one thing. 

It’s hopeless. You’re hopeless. You try desperately to hold onto the last little shreds of your self-control, but— There’s no chance you’ll be able to stop the tears, but still, anything, you’re desperate for _ any _ other victory. Your hands are shaking, and you can’t still them. The rest of you is shaking too, but you, you don’t inhabit your body enough right now to even see all the ways that you’re reacting. You haven’t made a noise, you don’t think. That’s your one comfort. If you can only control your breathing, you might be able to hide this until Emil drifts to sleep and you can fall apart without being seen. It’s all you want. _ Please. _

You do your best. You count the beats of each inhale and exhale, keep your breathing as soft and steady and _ silent _ as you can. You can do this. You can hide it well enough to escape notice. You can hear your own heartbeat pounding in your ears, but you breathe as shallowly as you’re able, and you’re certain you’re too quiet for Emil to hear anything. For a minute, you think you’re succeeding. You’re deceiving yourself. 

Your ability to understand words returns enough that you hear him ask, “Onni?”

The concern in his voice is naked enough that you have to repress a flinch. You’re still holding him too close to your chest for him to see your face, but he shifts in your arms, and you can feel him trying to look at you. You ought to answer him now. Say something to set him at ease. Say _ anything. _ But your throat is locked closed, and it takes everything you have just to breathe, and you can’t— You _ can’t _speak right now. You don’t think you could speak right now, no matter how badly you wish you could, no matter how hard you might try.

And you’ve missed your chance to reassure Emil. He’s pushing back from you harder now, both his hands braced against you as he tries to shift away on the bed. You release him, reluctantly. You don’t want to let him go. You don’t want him to see you. But the idea of holding him against his will is worse. You’re too frozen to fully comprehend all the reasons you don’t want this to happen, and you’re going to surrender, no matter how much you know you shouldn’t.

When you loosen your grip and he pushes away, you force yourself to look at him. You don’t trust yourself to understand words right now, but you— You need to see at least something of how he reacts. 

You don’t see much. The room is dark, yes, but his face is in the deep shadows. You see enough to see his expression go from confused to stricken, but no more. You’re slow to realize that his face is shadowed because only source of light is the moon through the window, directly behind him. And that _ your _face, as he looks at you, is fully in the moonlight.

This was already terrible enough, but that realization paralyzes you. It’s not quite enough to shock you out of the tears, just enough to freeze you in place, staring at Emil’s horrified expression as he looks back at you.

He starts speaking, more words you can’t understand. Swedish, you think, though you aren’t certain. Whatever language it is, he’s speaking too quickly and stumbling over his words. He reaches up to you, though his hand stops before he makes contact.

You can’t bear any more of this. You roll to lie flat on your back, your head turned away from Emil, away from the light. You feel the mattress dip as he starts to follow you forward, but again, he stops shy of actually touching you. You think he might be trying to speak Finnish now. He hesitates over the words in a way he doesn’t when he’s speaking his own language, but you still can’t understand him. You aren’t sure if it’s his Finnish causing problems or whether it’s simply your own mind refusing to cooperate.

Thinking over that question gives you something outside yourself to contemplate, something to help you detach from the present moment. So when you feel the mattress dip again and rise, it takes you longer than it should to realize— By the time you understand what’s happening and turn your head to look, all you see is one last glimpse of Emil’s back as he slips out your bedroom door.

Ah.

Despite everything, it strikes you like a blow. You tear your eyes from the doorway and stare at the ceiling instead. Now, at least, there’s no need to worry about silence. It’s a weak comfort. And still. Even if he’s gone, you should control yourself. You _ want _ to. You want this to be over, you want to learn your lesson, you want this night to pass and to never think about it again.

So you try to at least steady your breathing. It’s a hopeless exercise. You do your best to breathe shallowly, at an even pace. But you can’t even have this. Thinking about controlling your breathing only lets your thoughts circle back to why your breathing needs to be controlled in the first place. You push aside the memory of watching Emil go, but find yourself returning to the feeling of his skin on yours, him urging you onward. His hands on your back, holding you against him. The shift of the mattress as he got up to leave. It’s no use. You can’t focus on controlling yourself without coming back to everything that— Everything. 

The ceiling blurs and swims. You aren’t shaking now, but you aren’t confident you’d remember how to move if you tried. You blink every so often as the tears pool in your eyes and send them spilling over your cheeks, but that’s of less concern to you than— Than every other way you can’t center yourself. You’re used to tears. But you should be able to steady your breathing, your heartbeat, your thoughts, _ anything— _

The mattress dips under you again, and for a long moment, you don’t understand. Not until you see Emil leaning over you. Your vision is blurred enough that you can’t make out his face, but his hair is unmistakable. You don’t want to look at him right now, but you can’t bring yourself to turn away. He reaches out towards your face again, and you try not to flinch. 

But what touches your face isn’t his hand. It’s cloth. Something soft and cold and damp. It’s unexpected enough that it shocks you into moving, and you reach up to grab his wrist. It’s— a washcloth. You stare blankly for a moment, still trying to understand what’s happening.

After a long frozen moment, Emil takes the washcloth with his other hand and reaches out to you again. He’s speaking, you realize. “Sorry, _ sorry—” _ He dabs at one of your cheeks, then the other. “If, if isn’t good, say to me? I can do— What will help? Right now, if this is wrong?”

You’re enough in your own head again to properly focus on him. And when you really look at him, even in the dim light, you can see that his expression is equal parts uncertain and miserable.

You want to fix that. Your throat is still closed so tightly it’s difficult to speak, but you manage, “I’m sorry.”

Emil doesn’t look any less unhappy, but he manages to look even more confused. “No, no.” He swallows hard. “You— Nothing wrong, I was—”

His voice trails off, and he looks helplessly at you. You shouldn’t be asking him to talk abstracts in a language he barely knows at a time like this. You realize that you’re still holding his wrist. You release it. And— Your first impulse is to hold him again. Despite everything. You want to hold him. Instead, you set your hand on his arm, not quite holding him, not quite pulling him close to you, but… something.

And you see him smile. It’s shaky, but it’s there. He holds up the washcloth and says, “I can clean?”

You still don’t trust your voice, but you manage to nod. The tears still haven’t stopped. It’s never pleasant on its own, but you forgot how much worse it was in company. At least Emil doesn’t comment on it. He dabs at your cheeks one more time, but then he reaches down to your stomach. At the first touch of the cold cloth, you twitch, and clutch at his arm before you can stop yourself.

“Sorry, sorry,” he whispers. “Just— messy?”

He still doesn’t have the words, but you can’t teach him now. And you’d— forgotten. You’re grateful Emil thought of this. Tonight is… _ enough _without thinking about waking up in the morning, exhausted, with a headache, and facing the need to clean up after the two of you.

He carefully wipes off your stomach, then tugs up your pants more fully, making sure the waistband is properly settled. At that point, you’re beginning to suspect he’s reluctant to look you in the face. If you could find your words, you’d tell him that it isn’t necessary and he doesn’t need to worry, but on his own, there’s only so long he can avoid it. He finally gives in and straightens somewhat, but not far enough to dislodge your hand on his arm. He folds the washcloth over, so the stained parts are hidden, and then twists it nervously in his hands.

Slowly, he says, “I can… leave?”

“No,” you say, before the question has even fully registered with your mind. But it’s the correct answer. “No,” you repeat, hoping that your voice isn’t too pleading.

Emil still hesitates. “You are sure?”

You’re still too— raw. To do this. Your heart is beginning to pound again, just from the suggestion of him leaving. You don’t want to test your ability to speak right now, so you release Emil’s arm very slightly, so you can catch at the fabric of his sleeve and tug him forward. Towards you.

You have just enough time to realize that perhaps _ he _wants to leave, and you’re asking him for something that he doesn’t want. But the naked relief in his expression makes your cheeks burn, and he sets the washcloth off on your side table before he slips back into bed with you.

Though you aren’t in any state to be a decent bedmate. You keep forgetting that and you keep being sharply reminded, and it’s an exhausting cycle that leaves you feeling like an open wound. Emil doesn’t comment on it, and you don’t have the words to express how grateful you are for that. He holds himself up on one arm to collect the blankets from where the two of you kicked them, and begins arranging them over and around you. There’s an ache in your chest that feels like a hook through your ribs.

Emil edges closer underneath the blankets, and sets a tentative hand on your waist. You reach back to him, and he doesn’t hesitate. Though— You’re ready to tuck him against your chest again and hope he lets you hold him through the night. But he doesn’t fold himself into you that way. He inches up on the pillows and sets his chin on top of your head. For a moment you blink, startled. But his arm is still around you, and he doesn’t protest as you wrap yours around him. 

At least you’ve managed to stop crying. Too late to do you any good, and your eyes are sore and stinging, but it’s something. But— Just as you think that, you realize that your hands have started to shake again. Not just your hands, all of you. Your entire body is shaking, violently, and Emil hasn’t said a word, but it’s impossible that he’s failed to notice.

Somehow, you manage to keep your voice steady as you say again, “I’m sorry.”

“No, _ no.” _ He pulls you a little more tightly against him. “Me. _ I’m _ sorry. I—” He pauses, and you feel him shake his head. “So many words, I don’t want to— Maybe, after we sleep, we can talk? For next time?”

You hesitate. You _ should _ talk. But right now you need to be able to withdraw to somewhere private, somewhere you can be… alone. You _ need _ that. Reluctantly, you say, “Not… tonight.”

“Of course.” He doesn’t hesitate at all. “Not tonight. Later, maybe.”

“Mmh.” It should happen. You don’t want to discuss this. But you should. Perhaps. You can think about it later. When you’re less exhausted, less unsteady.

The shaking hasn’t stopped yet. But Emil’s arm and the blankets are a heavy weight over you, a steady, soothing pressure. It still takes some time for you to sleep. Your head aches and your eyes are still stinging. But you’re so tired that it has to happen eventually. And when you wake up in your forest, you’re alone. You sleep in a bed with the warmth of Emil’s skin against yours, and you sleep on the banks of your river, alone, listening to the quiet, constant murmur of the running water.

You wake up later than usual. And the first thing you notice is that you feel better than you deserve to. You still are worn thin and exhausted, but at the very least you feel capable of leaving your bed to face the day. Emil is still sleeping, but is facing the other way than he was last night, so that his back is pressed to your chest. Your arm is around him, and his arm rests on top of yours, trapping it.

You move slowly, so you don’t disturb him. Carefully, you extract your arm and push yourself up on your other elbow so you can look at him. His hair is tousled and you reach out to smooth it back away from his face. You card your fingers through his hair, and he stirs, but doesn’t quite wake. He blinks up at you once and smiles, then lets his eyes drift shut again. He reaches back to catch your arm and pull it back around him, and you can hear him sigh happily.

And— You’ve become complacent. You’ve gotten so used to avoiding thinking about the, the _ guilt, _ that when it strikes you now, it sends you reeling. You’re appalled by your own behavior. Somehow— Before, it was easier to invent excuses to ignore the consequences of your actions, and you don’t know what’s changed. You were so content to let Emil hold you as you fell asleep, you were on the verge of agreeing to discuss a _ future _of some sort with him. Your behavior was just as inexcusable before, but now you’re horrified all over again, as if this was the first lapse in judgment instead of a pattern you’ve become used to justifying.

You do your best not to show any of that outwardly, but Emil must feel something of your reaction. He doesn’t move, and he doesn’t release your arm, but he stirs and mumbles, “God morgon. Hyvää huomenta. Either one.”

No part of you wants to have this conversation, but you _ need _ to. And you should know better than to bring it up now, but— _ Weeks. _Weeks of this. You still aren’t certain why you let this go for so long before taking responsibility for your actions, and you’re afraid of what allowing yourself another delay might lead to.

You can’t put this off any longer. “You said… ‘next time.’”

Emil doesn’t move. “Mmhm.”

You have to ask. You have to. “What about Lalli?”

He’s still not entirely awake, and you’ve already struggled with the limits of his Finnish more than once in the last day, but your words have already deserted you and you can’t go on. He stirs in your arms, and for a moment you think he’s going to turn to face you. You push down the sudden rush of alarm and only— tighten your hold on him, marginally, pulling him back more firmly against your chest.

Emil pats your arm and yawns. “Lalli is…” He hesitates, and you focus on remaining still and calm. _ “Good,” _ he says, firmly, with confidence. Then he yawns again.

You want to let yourself believe that he understood your question. It’s too easy, and you don’t deserve the comfort.

You force yourself to say it. “I can’t ask you to be unfaithful to Lalli. I can’t do that.”

Now you have his attention. You feel him stiffen in your arms. “I _ wouldn’t.” _

What? It’s so unlike anything you could have expected that for a moment, you have no idea what to say. Still, you have to say something. “But you already have.”

Ah. At that, he finally pulls away from you and sits up in bed. Reluctantly, you mirror him. He combs his fingers through his hair, over and over, a reflexive gesture. There’s hurt in his expression when he looks at you. You ought to say something more, but it’s difficult to say anything at all, and it’s only becoming harder with time.

Finally, Emil says, “I haven’t. I won’t.”

You don’t know what he’s trying to do. “We both know you have.” He just looks at you blankly. You can feel yourself getting frustrated, but you— you _ can’t _let this go. “I can’t let you hurt Lalli.” 

He isn’t meeting your eyes anymore. He frowns down at his lap. “I wouldn’t— With Lalli? To Lalli? _ Never. _Why—?”

Your chest is a dull ache. This had to happen. But you’d hoped it could be… finished as quickly and cleanly as possible. That you could reach an understanding, and then you could go to Lalli and speak to him about everything you’ve done. You don’t understand why this is an argument. Helplessly, you say, “Don’t you love him?”

  
  


You’re the one who started this. You know this is the wrong way to have this conversation. You know you shouldn’t be doing this. You could _ tell _ from the beginning that it was a bad idea, and now you’re too worked up to stop yourself. Emil is struggling with his words and he’s upset and _ you’re _upset, and you can feel everything burning down around you and still can’t stop yourself.

Emil starts, “I have been,” and you’re so tense you’re about to shatter. It’s all you can do to hold yourself still and silent. You can’t quite look at Emil, you can’t focus on him, you can’t watch his face. He pauses, makes a frustrated sound and starts again, “I have been—” 

When you’re expecting him to say ‘rakastan häntä,’ and instead he says ‘rakastanut hänet,’ it’s just— too much. You can’t hear anything else he says after that. Your chest is a block of ice, you can’t move, you can’t _ breathe. _

Your voice is faint and distant. “So you… loved him. You used to love him. It’s something that’s over and done with.”

“Onni,” he says, and you can hear the alarm in his voice. “Onni, wait.”

You can’t stop. “You’re finished with it now. You’re done loving him and you’re ready to move on, and I just wonder when you were going to bother _ telling _him—” 

It’s too much. Emil is repeating, “Wait, _ wait,” _ but it’s already more than you can endure and you can’t take this any longer.

Your throat is too tight to speak. You can’t ask him to leave, but when you stand, he backs away, his eyes wide. As you walk forward, he backs step by step towards the door, begging, “Onni, please, _ wait—” _ but you just— you can’t.

You start crying before you can get him out of your room. You ought to be ashamed, but your chest is a hollow, aching pit, and you can’t feel anything much at all. You’re moving too slowly, barely inhabiting your own body. Emil could stop you from closing your door just by putting out his hand, but he doesn’t. It shuts in his face, softly, and that face is the last thing you see of him, still wide-eyed, confused, and wretched.

At first, that’s all you can manage. You lean forward, pressing your forehead into the wood of the door. You want to sob, you think. You hold that back. But the tears, you can’t control those. You don’t know where they’re coming from, after last night. You would think there had to be a limit. At some point. It feels like that would only be fair.

You can hear Emil. He’s saying, “Onni, I’m bad at Finnish, _ please, _ I’m _ so _bad at Finnish—” 

You push away from the door, because you have to. Once you stumble across the room, you can’t hear him anymore. Your fingers are numb and clumsy, but you manage to close your window and draw your curtain shut. After that, all you can do is sit heavily on the edge of your bed and bury your face in your hands.

It’s some time before you can think properly again. Your head aches, but you can’t focus on that right now. You need to… You can’t make this right. Not at this point. You can’t. But you need to fix whatever damage you can, and then you need to _ leave. _

You should have left a long time ago. You should have told Lalli, even if you couldn’t explain, and then you should have _ left. _ Back after that first dream in Emil’s home, once you finished quarantine. Once it was made clear to you exactly what Lalli and Emil shared. Or at least once it was obvious that you would never learn to _ control yourself. _ It sounds so foolish like that. Selfish. Petty. How many times did you see what they were? How many times were you _ told? _And you still— 

The idea of someone seeing you right now is just— unbearable. You don’t want to go near your door right now, but as you stand and slowly move closer, at least you can’t hear Emil in the hall anymore. You lay your hands on the door and reach for the memory of the living wood. 

It’s difficult work. You know trees and forests, but these aren’t your trees, or your forests, it’s wood that was grown in a strange, foreign land, from a tree that was cut down before you were born. It’s a waste of effort. You’ll only have to undo it when you go. But you manage to revive the wood enough to send new shoots growing into the doorframe. Little ones, but enough, you hope. When you step back, your vision swims and your legs nearly buckle, and you barely make it back to the bed.

You lie down, because you’re not sure you can keep yourself upright, and put your hands back over your face. You’re done crying—you’re not sure you _ can _ cry more at this point—but your head pounds and even the dim lighting of your room is too painfully intense to bear right now. For a moment, it’s tempting to try sleeping off the headache— But then you think about encountering Emil or Lalli in your dreams, or even Reynir, and you feel sick at the prospect of trying to explain yourself.

If you push yourself… perhaps you can leave before you have to sleep. It wouldn’t be pleasant. But it might be better than the alternative. You need to talk to Lalli before you go. Somehow, you need to force yourself to do that. If you pack everything you’ll bring with you, confess to Lalli, and leave, that might be best. It will be awful. But you deserve that right now.

It’s difficult to think through what you can bring. What you _ want _ to bring. You need your clothing. Some clothing. Your kantele. But then? Your mind goes blank. You could bring some of your smaller furs. Expensive ones, things you could sell or trade if you need to. But it hardly seems worth it. It feels like you ought to keep— something of Tuuri’s. You _ need _ to keep something of hers. But you don’t know what, and you shy away when you try to think about it more closely.

You do a poor job of packing. And a slow job. You ought to be able to do better than this, but you’re moving in a daze that you can’t seem to shake. At some point, the door to your room rattles, and you tense, but the new growth holds, and whoever it is gives up and goes on their way. You try to focus on your half-empty bag. There’s hardly anything in here, but you can’t think of what else you’d even want, let alone need.

It’s easier to let your mind drift to what you’re going to say to Lalli. You should have told him so long ago. If you’d given him any reason to trust you again— That won’t be an issue now. You just wish— If he stands in front of you and asks you _ why, _you have no idea what you could possibly tell him.

You don’t know how long you’ve been kneeling in front of your bag, staring at nothing with your thoughts racing in useless circles, but you’re distracted enough that you miss the sounds of someone at your window. Even when you hear the noise, it takes you too long to _ understand. _By the time you’ve realized what must be happening and stagger to your feet, you’re too late to do anything about it. You hear the window slide open, the curtain is pushed aside, and then Lalli is slipping over the windowsill and into your bedroom.

He glares at you, and snaps, “Why would you lock your door?”

It’s like you’re hearing him from a distance. You knew you had to have this conversation, but it’s more and more clear to you with every moment how badly you’ve betrayed his trust, and your throat is closed so tightly you don’t know if you can speak. You just barely manage, “I’m sorry.”

That makes him glare even harder. “Why are you _ sorry? _ And why are you talking to me?” All you can do is look blankly at him. After a moment, he hisses with frustration and rolls his eyes. “Emil is worried _ sick.” _

“I’m sorry,” you repeat, as useless as it is. You don’t know what else to say.

_ “Why? _And what did you even say to him? His Finnish is worse than usual and his Swedish is too fast. I’d make him go to sleep to talk to me, but he wasn’t sure that was safe.” He frowns down at your pack. “Sometimes he’s smarter than he looks.”

You can’t speak. Your chest aches and despite everything, your eyes are starting to burn again. You fight it back as hard as you can.

Lalli’s glare softens as the silence stretches out over the long, awful seconds. More quietly, he says, “What did he even say that was so bad? He probably didn’t mean it. He can be stupid, but he’s not mean.” You still don’t trust your voice. After a moment, Lalli adds, “I bet he’d apologize if you let him.”

Ah. That almost undoes all your self-control. Again, all you can manage is, “I’m sorry.” That’s not enough, you take a deep, uneven breath and force yourself to press on. “It isn’t his fault. It’s mine. I can leave today— now. I can leave now.” One more breath, as you struggle to steady yourself. “Try not to blame him. I should have done better.”

Now— Now Lalli looks frightened. He stares at you, like he’s waiting for you to go on. But you don’t have anything more.

He says, _ “No.” _

You have to swallow hard before you can speak. “It’s bad for me to be here.”

“Then we’re coming with you. I _ told _you that—”

“It’s bad for _ you _to have me here.” He’s still staring at you, and the blank look on his face makes your heart twist. “I’m not good for you. It will be better if I’m gone.”

He doesn’t say anything to that. You know better than to read that as acceptance, though. You don’t think he understands what you’ve done, somehow, but it’s too difficult to say it to his face. You’re left in silence with him, with your thoughts circling miserably through every way you’ve betrayed his trust, just since he brought you back from Saimaa.

Finally, you can’t stand listening to your own thoughts anymore and force yourself to speak. “Emil wouldn’t have— It was because of me. I didn’t want to come between you. But I didn’t control myself. I asked him to be unfaithful. When I’m gone— Try to forgive him. It was my fault, not his.”

There’s silence for a few seconds more, as Lalli continues to stare. But now, he sounds completely baffled when he asks, “What are you talking about?”

It completely throws you. All you can do for a moment is blink, as you try to understand. “He and I—” Your voice trails off. You don’t want to say it out loud, even now, even when you’re trying to hold yourself accountable for your actions. “We were—”

Lalli makes an impatient gesture. “Yes, I know. It was really obvious.”

You’re completely adrift. You don’t understand what he’s saying. Your head is pounding too hard to make sense of his words. 

He frowns at you, peering at your face, and adds, “Did you think I missed it? It was my idea in the first place. And it was really, _ really _obvious.”

“Your idea,” you repeat. You’re numb all over. You don’t _ understand _ You ought to be asking him questions, _ something, _but you feel barely tethered to your own body right now, and your eyes are beginning to sting again. You don’t want to accuse Lalli of lying, not now, not when you’re the one who’s failed to be honest with him. But this can’t be the truth.

He takes a tentative step closer, still studying you. “I thought you were just being weird. You didn’t realize? Emil said you maybe wanted privacy. Why do you think I started going out scouting at night again?”

“But you and Emil…” You don’t know how to finish that sentence.

“He couldn’t cheat on me.” Lalli’s voice is impatient. “There’s nothing to cheat on. And anyways he’s already seeing you. Don’t be weird.”

You’re at a complete loss. You have no idea what you could possibly say. Lalli’s words are clear enough, but you don’t— You don’t _ understand. _

Lalli is still frowning at you, but as the silence stretches out, his expression softens a little. “We could go talk to him.”

You should. But you flinch away from the idea. The memory of how things fell apart this morning is still too fresh and raw, and you don’t trust yourself to correctly interpret his words right now.

And Lalli is watching you too closely to miss that reaction. “In your dreams,” he says. “I thought he said something stupid by mistake again, so I had him go to sleep and made Reynir go bring him to your forest. That way I could make you both fix it without having to solve it myself.”

You’re still just staring. You’re reeling, you’re lost, and you’re too exhausted to make sense of what Lalli is saying to you.

He says, “Please?”

There’s a lump in your throat, but you swallow hard and say, “Yes.”

Lalli piles almost every blanket on top of you on the bed, and takes one blanket to the floor with him. He lies down in front of the door, and you try not to flinch. You deserve much worse than that level of mistrust.

Lalli’s eyes are shut before he’s even fully horizontal, but it takes you some time to fall asleep. You’re so tired that you would have thought it would be easier, but your thoughts race in such frantic circles that it takes a while for your mind to still and quiet enough for you to drift off. 

When you finally begin to awake in your forest, your heart begins to pound so hard that for a moment, you’re in danger of slipping out of the dream. You steady yourself, and let the familiarity of your forest center you even further. You can hear distant, indistinct voices, but take a minute to steel yourself before you go seek them out.

You spot Emil’s hair first. A moment later, you recognize Reynir and Lalli beside him. They’re speaking, though it appears to be mostly Emil talking, gesturing animatedly, though you’re still too far away to make out the words. Lalli spots you first and makes a sharp gesture, pointing over towards you. Emil cuts himself off mid-sentence and freezes for an instant before letting his hands fall to hang awkwardly at his sides. You don’t know what your face is doing right now, and you don’t want to think about it.

The silence is suffocating as you approach the group. Reynir is the first one to speak up. He clears his throat awkwardly and says, “So I guess that’s sorted out? Well, I mean, sorted out for getting you ready to sort it out. Right?”

You don’t think you’re able to do much of this right now. But you at least manage to tell him, “Thank you.”

He grins. “It’s no problem! And, um.” He glances over at Lalli. “I guess my parents are probably going to be inviting you over for dinner tomorrow? I’m sure they’ll be fine with that.”

Lalli doesn’t say anything, but you hear him hiss under his breath.

Reynir winces, but you don’t comment on it and keep your sign internal. It isn’t anything you couldn’t have guessed yourself.

Reynir adds, “We should probably plan another trip to the hot spring soon, since the last one didn’t work out. And, um, I think my family might need some work with the sheep soon, mage work, and if you’re interested, we can definitely pay you good wages—”

You’re too tired for this. “Thank you,” you say, cutting him off. “I appreciate the offer. We can discuss this later.”

“Sure! Sure. No problem at all. I’ll come to visit— tomorrow, maybe? Or after that? We’ll figure it out.”

Thankfully, he doesn’t take much longer than that to make his exit. As soon as he’s gone, you address Lalli. “You didn’t need to do that.”

He just shrugs without replying. He’s clearly not planning to listen, but you also can’t force him to have this conversation right now.

And you know that you’re using this as an excuse to avoid looking at Emil. Your chest is already aching and you haven’t even properly begun. And— You hadn’t considered this. But in dreams, with Emil and Lalli both in front of you, it’s impossible to ignore the shining connection stretching between their chests. Even if Lalli thinks you’ve misunderstood what they share, this is something you couldn’t have fabricated. You can’t look at Emil directly, but you can’t look away from that connection.

Quietly, you say, “Don’t you love him?”

At the edge of your vision, you see Emil twitch. He clears his throat self-consciously and reaches up to run his fingers through his hair before he speaks. “Yes,” he says. “Only— I’m pretty sure this is where I messed up, um. Before. Because I know what I’m trying to say, and, I mean, that should be less of a problem here, but…” He hesitates, and you can hear the unhappiness in his voice. “I don’t want to do this wrong.”

You force yourself to look at Lalli. “And you love him.” You know Lalli too well to bother asking it as a question.

He shrugs. “So?”

Your chest is too tight. You reach out towards the connection between them, though you stop shy of actually touching it. It’s so apparent that you don’t understand how you let yourself believe you could— insert yourself into that space. You keep your eyes on Lalli. “So I don’t belong between you.”

Lalli is frowning at you. “Don’t be stupid.”

“You said it yourself.” You swallow and have to blink hard before you go on. “Soulmates. You taught Emil the word.”

“Yes, and then you tried to teach him the wrong one.” He’s frowning even harder now, studying you so closely it’s almost uncomfortable. “Is that what this is about?”

“You’re _ soulmates,” _you plead. You finally look at Emil, hoping for agreement, but he looks as confused as Lalli does. Your throat closes, and you can’t go on.

Emil speaks up again, but he’s speaking to Lalli, giving you a moment to compose yourself. He says, “What’s he talking about?”

Lalli transfers the glare to Emil. “Can’t you see it?” He gestures at the connection bridging their chests.

“See what?” Emil waves his hand in front of his chest. It passes through the connection several times, without any apparent effect.

After a moment, Lalli sighs. “Why do you have to make everything weird?”

_ “I _make things weird?” He takes one cautious step closer, and you can see him studying you sideways, though he still avoids looking at you directly. “Is it… okay?”

Lalli shrugs and doesn’t answer. He’s looking at you.

You have to force yourself to speak. “But you love each other.”

“You love me,” Lalli says. “So? It’s just what families do.”

_ Ah. _ Your throat closes, and you have to blink and blink as your eyes burn. You see Emil take an abortive half-step towards you before he pulls himself up short.

Lalli edges closer a little more slowly, until he’s standing shoulder to shoulder with you. He’s studying you out of the corner of his eye, frowning in a way that suggests confusion and concern. You ought to be doing something to fix that, but you can’t think clearly enough to tell what that would be.

When you feel an arm slip around your back, it’s enough of a surprise that at first you don’t understand what’s happening. Lalli is looking off away from you now, but he stays where he is. You— He’s never cared for hugs, only occasionally tolerated them, so you stopped offering them when you were very young. But if he’s made the first move, then surely— 

You turn to Lalli and carefully put your arms around him, and he doesn’t slip out of your grasp. You only hold him lightly at first. You don’t want to ask too much of him. But his arms are tight around your back, and cautiously, you hold him closer, waiting for the moment he signals you’ve gone too far. It doesn’t come, and you indulge yourself, holding him tightly for a long, quiet moment. And then, you make yourself release him, before you reach the limits of what he’s willing to endure. 

He pats you briskly on the back before he steps away. He’s studying you closely again, and you still don’t know what he’s looking for. But he gestures with one arm towards Emil, and says, _ “See?” _

You aren’t positive you do, but it is some comfort that Emil looks as uncertain as you feel. Lalli reaches out to catch Emil’s sleeve, and tugs him in closer. Lalli steps away from you, but pulls Emil into his former place. You don’t know what to say, and Emil’s face is quickly turning red, but Lalli seems to be satisfied.

After a moment, Lalli says, “We can leave Iceland this fall. _ Together. _You can’t go off by yourself before then. Besides, Reynir’s parents are going to invite us for dinner tomorrow. And you still have to finish Emil’s sweater.”

Emil glances at Lalli, then back to you. He looks completely taken aback, but you can also see him struggling not to smile. “You’re giving me a sweater?”

“No,” you correct automatically, “Lalli is giving you a sweater. I’m only knitting it.”

Even having realized the sort of maneuvering Lalli has been doing, it takes you much longer than it should to catch on. When you look his way, he’s watching you with an expression of combined pity and exasperation.

Lalli says, “I’m going now. Both of you have to promise not to be too stupid about everything.” 

And before you can answer, he fades out of the dream. You turn back to Emil. “Then I suppose I’m giving you a sweater after all.”

He’s doing a poor job of hiding his smile. But he also looks completely surprised and completely delighted, and you feel an almost painful warmth in your chest as you watch him. You still hardly know what to say, but you do reach out to take one of his hands.

Emil’s face is still red, but he steps a little closer and you feel his fingers interlace with yours. He says, “Am I still allowed to sit with you while you’re working on my sweater? Or is it a secret?”

With your free hand you reach up and brush a stray lock of hair back from his face. “It isn’t a secret.”

“Good, I just didn’t want to— be any trouble. And, um.” He ducks his head. “Maybe you can help me get better at Finnish? If it isn’t too much trouble. I know that’s a lot to ask. And I don’t want to impose, especially when you’re already going to be busy—”

It’s strange to think that you began this conversation struggling to even look at Emil, because now, you aren’t certain you’d be able to look away from him. It takes you a moment to find your voice, but you tell him, “I want to try.”

His face is still flushed and his hand is still tightly locked with yours. The way he beams up at you makes your entire chest ache. “Oh good,” he says. “Me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](https://spockandawe.tumblr.com/tagged/it%20echoes%20when%20i%20breathe/chrono)


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